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)
