Competition Day, Regionals 2025

We could not have asked for better weather on competition day in Omaha! Dressed in all-out maroon and gold, we met in the parking lot of a hotel to join the convoy of cars headed to the competition site, and get excited to compete!

The team ready to rumble! 

The team listening to pre-contest words of wisdom from head coach Nic.

Continuing the team tradition of painting buckets before each contest, all with soil themes, of course!

After seeing some mollisols in uplands, floodplains, and various hillslope positions, the team placed fourth with team judging! Gabrielle placed 7th and Jake placed 4th as individuals! Overall, we placed 4th at the competition, securing our spot to compete in the National Soil Judging Competition in North Carolina in the spring! We are so proud of our team, and could not have done it without the hard work of everyone, those traveling and not, as well as our amazing coaches (Nora Pearson, Nate Lund, Anna Windels, and Nic Jelinski) and supporters. We are so excited for nationals this spring and to see where our team can go! Go Gophers!

Signing off,

Cecily Greblo

Regional Competition Practice Days

This September 27-October 3, we participated in the Region V Soil Judging Contest, hosted by the University of Nebraska-Omaha. We started our travels by visiting the University of Minnesota Research Center in Lamberton, MN. They kindly dug two pits for us, where we practiced both our team and individual pit skills and saw some classic Minnesota mollisols in corn fields. After practice, we made a delicious group dinner and explored some of the landscape in preparation for understanding what to look for in the competition. 

Judgers discussing the profile of the first pit. 

On Day 1 of practice, we saw some new soil structures we calibrated to, including a geogenic structure that looks like stratified soil in a pit.

A stratified soil ped.

Soil Judgers working on a team pit in a footslope (low slope)!

Wading through the pit in a floodplain! 

We learned a lot this day about classifying aquic soils - not just by looking at redox features, but by considering how those features work together with the hillslope position to define an aquic soil!

On day 2, we saw an amazing argiaboll - I think we all gasped when we saw this soil. This soil had a leached albic horizon (the light white layer) that results from the leaching of clay and nutrients like iron into a lower layer, causing a large change in texture between layers.

On Day 2 we also got to see some paleoterrace soils, which are soils at least partially formed on old terraces that used to have rivers flowing through.

Judgers hard at work!

On Day 3, we had the infamous flannel day!

We also saw loess puppies/puppens, soft calcium carbonate concretions, formed in wind-blown silty soil from calcium carbonates that had moved down into the profile and reprecipitated as these chunks. 

For the first time in the competition, we saw some sandy soils formed on floodplains; these soils were so sandy that it was difficult to get samples out!

Listening to Head Coach Nic talk about this floodplain soil. 

A profile from one of the floodplain soils, where we can see a developed “A” horizon, and stratification in the sandy, less developed horizons. 

We also got to talk about colluviated soils (soil moving down a slope to form soils at the bottom) and to differentiate parent materials from colluviated events.

Competition day is next!

Signing off,

Cecily Greblo (co-captain)

September Field Days!

 Hi Everyone! We are so excited to be back and practicing our soil skills. We had our first field day earlier this September at Chuck Clanton’s farm, a former UMN BBE professor and advocate for sustainable farming practices. He dug us two pits along a hillslope in SE MN, and we practiced describing the soil pits while simulating competition timing, completing one pit as individuals and one in teams. We had a delicious team lunch with food
brought by our head coach, Nic, and learned more about the history of the farm and sustainable agricultural management from Chuck. 

The farm uses a 10-year rotation method, with corn and soybeans planted each year between perennial ground cover. This helps restore organic matter and fertility (including planting nitrogen-fixing legumes) in the soil, while reducing resources and inputs needed for the annual crops. These soils were so much fun to look at because we saw some really cool features! The dark circles pictured are crotovinas, where animals have dug into and mixed organic material deeper into the soil (like gophers!). We also saw beautiful mollisols (soils with a thick and dark top horizon). 

The hillslope positions of our two pits. 

Upper backslope pit. We saw a typic hapludoll with lots of krotovinas and worm channels.

At the toeslope, we saw an endoaquoll with a thick, dark, mollic epipedon. The biopores (here, vertical worm channels) were amazing sights to see so deep in the soil!

Hydrology in action! It was a wet end to summer and start of fall, and it rained right before we visited the soil pits. Thank you to Chuck for pumping water out of the pits so we could see more of the soil profile!

Our second field day was at Jake Olson’s house (soil judging co-captain!), whose dad dug us a pit at their family farm west of the Twin Cities. We completed this pit in teams in the same competition style to practice completing a card in the time allotted for a competition, which is one hour. We got to see another gorgeous mollisol (these types cover a large area of Minnesota) with some calcium carbonate deposits, showing where calcium carbonates had leached down over time to create visible white streaks. The best part about finding these is watching them fizz when you pour weak hydrochloric acid over them. A bonus of being on Jake’s farm was seeing their resident peacocks and raiding their apple trees! 

Getting out to see pits early in the season is very important for our team so we can get out into some pits before the ground freezes. Thank you so much to Chuck, Matt Lundberg (NRCS District Conservationist), and Bailey (soil judging coach) for organizing this day. Thank you to Jake and his family for digging us a pit and providing us with so much food. Stay tuned for our Regional Competition update! 

Signing off, 

Cecily Greblo (co-captain)