Download Soil Properties Project for SOIL 205 Course and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Agricultural engineering in PDF only on Docsity! SOIL 205 – The Soil Ecosystem Soil Properties Project Spring 2009 The purpose of this project is twofold. You will be introduced to the types of soil data available on the web. You will then be using this information to evaluate the important properties of soils relative to plant growth and land use. Carefully follow the instructions given below to complete this project. The project report is due Friday, May 1st by 5 PM and will count 30 points towards the course grade. Reports turned in after this date will have 5 points deducted for each day the assignment is late. Project grades will be based on the quality of the answers to the project questions. High-quality answers are accurate, informative, concise, grammatically correct, and neatly presented. Keep in mind that answers need to be in your own words, and not copied word for word. Proper attribution for information presented must also be given. For this project, you will be assigned a soil that is common to some region of the US. You will be given a both a Soil Series name and a Lab Pedon Number. These will then be used to access information about this soil from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) database. The soil series name can be used to access an official description of the soil profile and associated site information. Go to: http://ortho.ftw.nrcs.usda.gov/cgi-bin/osd/osdname.cgi Enter the soil series name in the box and click Find Series – you will then be given a choice of 2 boxes to click on. If you click on View Extent Map, you will see a map showing counties in the US where the soil is found. Use this information to answer Question 1. Click on View Description to see a detailed description of the soil. You will find a description of a typical profile of this series as well as a lot of information about site characteristics, soil classification, climate, and land use. This information will be used to answer Questions 2-6. To obtain chemical and physical data for the soil, you will need to go to a different website: http://ssldata.nrcs.usda.gov/querypage.asp Select the box labeled Lab Pedon Number and type in your soil’s number in the box to the right. Click Execute Query. In the screen that opens, you should see the number you entered in the field below pedon_number – make sure the number is correct and then check the box to the left. Make sure Generate Report is selected and click Continue. In the field that appears in the new screen, highlight Primary Characterization Report and Supplementary Characterization Report and click Get Report. The new screen that appears contains all of the laboratory analyses that have been performed on this soil. These reports can be difficult to read – there is a lot of information, so make sure you carefully read the column headings. In some cases, an analysis such as pH might be run using several different methods. This might not make much difference for your interpretations, but the instructor can help if you have questions. Use this information to answer Questions 7-9. The following contains Questions 1-9 and illustrates the format to be followed for your project report.
