Instructions

Soils expose themselves in many different ways. In the world of soil scientists, we either dig pits in the ground (often with a backhoe), or take “core” samples to get an idea of what a soil looks like. However, there are many places where these “soil profiles” (a picture of a soil, to a certain depth, as shown below) are visible without even needing to dig a pit. You probably have seen soil profiles without even noticing them! The most common are what we refer to as “road cuts”. These are vertical slices through the soil profile on a hill to level out the slope for building a road.
Assignment Instructions: Taking Your Profile Picture
For this assignment you need to go exploring and find an exposed profile. Note that this may require a bit of exploring! The exposed face should actually expose the soil profile vertically and must note merely be the surface of a soil on a slope.
You will need:
A digital camera (a cell phone camera is fine)
Something for scale (be creative!)
If you are close enough to your soil, take a shovel or a trowel and scrape the surface. Even soils get dirty, and this helps to expose them! Take a photograph of the soil and make certain that whatever you have chosen for scale is in the picture. Once you have a photo that you are happy with, use this Discussion Forum, post the photo and share information about your picture. Try to find your “soil-mate” – who’s soil profile picture shares the most similarities with yours? What might be the reason for these similarities?

Solution

Soil Profiles

The soil-mate appears to be from the Borgstrom series. Similarities between the two profiles can be attributable to the very deep and moderately well-drained soils that get formed in the sandy outwash deposits. Nonetheless, in the Wallace series, the well-drained soils get developed in the sandy deposits located on dunes, outwash plains, and lake plains.

The Borgstrom series is characterized by loamy lacustrine sediments positioned on the lake plains and outwash plains. Its penetrability is rapid in the solum, excluding the ortstein horizon, that is abstemiously fast in the causal loamy deposits. For the Wallace series,……………………………………To access the rest of the solution for $5, please click on the purchase button.