Seven University of Minnesota students travelled to Manhattan, KS from April 3-7 to compete in the 2017 NACTA Soil Judging Contest hosted by Kansas State University. The team left in the early morning hours on Monday, April 3rd and arrived at our home for the week, Tuttle Creek State Park, just outside of Manhattan by late afternoon.
 |
| Sunset over the Tuttle Creek Reservoir, on the porch of our cabins for the week in Tuttle Creek State Park |
We spent Tuesday describing 4 pits on a catena in Rannells Prairie, south of Manhattan. We beat the rain in the morning, but it rained hard the rest of the day. The Manhattan area received over 10 inches of rain in the past 10 days and the pits were generally very wet. Dr. Mickey Ransom (KSU contest organizer) and his crew were hard at work pumping pits every day. Thanks Mickey!
 |
| Tessa Belo (R) and Julia Otten (L) describing a soil formed in colluvium over residuum on a backslope on Rannells Prairie. |
 |
| This gully was dry last spring and fire danger was severe. A different story this year! |
 |
| Footslope pit at Rannells Prairie with well developed slickensides formed in colluvium. |
 |
| Slickensides |
Wednesday brought a break in the rain, some beautiful sunshine, and two pits differing in their development near Ashland Bottoms, in the Kansas River Valley.
 |
| Stream terrace overlooking the Kansas River floodplain in Ashland Bottoms |
 |
| An Entic Haplustoll on a 20-yr floodplain near Ashland Bottoms |
 |
| A much better developed Typic Haplustoll (with a cambic subsurface diagnostic horizon) on can older stream terrace above the floodplain |
Thursday brought more sunshine and 2 pits on a catena at the KSU Agronomy Farm North. Two other practice pits on the catena (at a footslope and stream terrace position) were completely full of water so we did auger/gutter descriptions as best we could!
 |
| KSU Agronomy Farm North catena |
 |
| The completed soil-landscape synthesis diagram that we worked on every night of the week. |
