Today, the team described four pits (two as a team and two individually) northeast of Norfolk in Wayne County, Nebraska, at the Thompson Wildlife Management Area. The landscape is comprised predominantly of dissected loess uplands. Due to all of the snow and winds they had in Norfolk over the past few days, several of the pits had large amounts of snow filling them. A huge thanks to Sarah Sellin (contest organizer with Northeast Community College) for staying out late the night before scooping snow out of pits with a backhoe!
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| Thompson WMA landscape - Wayne County, NE. This property was in agriculture until approximately 25 years ago. |
We dug out the rest as best we could, describing a Haplustoll on a shoulder position.
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| Geba Benitez and Devon Brodie getting in an early morning workout. |
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| Devon Brodie and Will Effertz discussing horizon morphology and nomenclature. |
It was a tale of two days, because in the afternoon, the sun came out, the wind died down, and the temperature climbed to 50 degrees. All of us cold hardy Minnesotans were complaining about how hot it was. We described a Haplustept (an eroded
Haplustoll) on a backslope with some beautiful redoximorphic features that the official judges and NRCS soil scientists have interpreted as relict. Pipestems and nodules abounded.
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A Haplustept on a backslope position.
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| This is about when the entire team started complaining that it was WAY TOO HOT. Will Effertz, Matt Bluhm, Morgan Fabian, Gabe Benitez, and Autumn Boxum working on a portion of a team description sheet. |
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| Cross section through a pipestem redox feature interpreted as relict. You can see a root channel running through the center of the feature. We are a bit skeptical... |
