We use Hori Hori knives or other fixed blades to poke around the pit. I was partial to the wood handled Mora knives early on in my career. They were about $10 - much cheaper than they are now. I found a good substitute in the later part of my career which had a blunted point. That held up pretty well.

I was this close to banning you lol.

A - topsoil Horizon. This should have a modifier, but for some reason doesn’t

E - Eluviated horizon - means stuff washed out

Bhs - subsoil with accumulated organic and sesquioxides (Fe and Al oxides)

Bs - subsoil with more sesquioxides

Bw - subsoil - minimal soil development

Normally there is a C horizon, which indicates parent geological material, but I don’t know why they didn’t call it here.

Tillage is much more damaging to soils and these systems than fertilization. I won’t refute that Chem. Fertilizer can have negative effects, but this is generally more of a chronic issue that builds up over time

I have my political direction picked, just look at my profile pic

I’m that nerd. Structure like this comes from the soil containing 2:1 clays - clay is made of sheet like chains of silicone and oxygen

Depending on its structure, two sheets can bind together imperfectly, leaving a gap in the middle. Water gets in the gap and forces the sheets to expand (and contract when it dries out). Over decades to centuries you get structure forming. You get prismatic structure because hexagons are the most efficient shape in nature, so shear planes form when clays smush against themselves - it’s the same mechanic with basalt columns, but there is volcanism driving it

What do you mean? Why is it prismatic and blocky shaped?

You have 3 layers there:
An Ah - the black topsoil
An Ae horizon indicating eluvial processes
And a Big horizon - you’ve got redoximorphic features called mottles.

Textures looks pretty heavy; I would guess clay or silty clay

Pedology definitely has its own language. The USDA version makes my head spin - they smush a bunch of prefixes and suffixes together to make a word. It’s really weird from the outside looking in. The Canadian system is kind of like that but we use full words to describe.

ex: Gleyed Gray Luvisol - each word means something.

in the US, they use parts of words to make a new one, which is weird.

Stabby, I just wanted to say, I saw your original comment, and was going to side with you - I don’t think it’s feasible to avoid surveillance. I also wanted to say that the way this conversation touches on all the points I thought about ‘drafting’ my comment in my head, so it was really great to read.

While you can have reasonably dumb sensors (like motion lights in our house, but y’know in a city application), anything beyond that gets really challenging to use without compromising privacy, or becomes a tremendous pain the ass if we give a shit about privacy. Having a bajillion sensors all not talking to each other, or talking to each other through numerous layers creates a data management nightmare. it’s why you don’t get a bunch of technical experts to write several different parts of a report, for instance. You need one main author to go through and make it all sound the same and the parts to speak to each other. Same goes with data. Because of that need, you open yourself up to all that data/surveillance being compromised by 3rd parties or abused by governments, as you point out.

Not my pit, but a really pretty profile I yanked from the Rode Island soils Instagram

We don’t have fragipans in my area. This one looks a lot like a Sombric brunisol (Canadian classification) to me.

They mentioned they were surprised to see 7% clay lol

I would hope so! I hold a M.Sc. in soils and did 10 years of soil surveying

You’re referring to the texture triangle.

But yes, all textures are just different ratios of the size fractions (sand 2 mm to 0.05 mm, silt 0.05 mm to 0.002 mm, clay <0.002 mm).

Not all clays will swell - kaolinite is a 1:1 clay for instance but 2:1 clays like montmorillonite will hydrate and swell to a greater degree.

In the A you usually get granular structure (if it’s high in carbon, like mollisols/chernozems), or platy if it’s an elvuiated A, like you would find in a spodzol/brunisol

In B horizons structure is caused by shrink-swell action in 2:1 clays. Water gets in the clay sheets and spreads them apart, and the sheets contract when they dry out. Freezing can also have an effect. Since a hexagon is the most efficient shape, you get prisms forming. Think I’d the Giant’s Causeway - columnar basalt, but with much weaker and different forces.

You might ask how do I get structure in non-clay soils? Clay is in every texture almost but in different proportions. sandy loam has clay in it too, for instance

The platy structure in the A horizon I mention earlier forms from the B shrinking and swelling as well.

I wouldn’t say meaningless (though I see you refine your commentary in another comment).

It’s one of those ‘how do you prove a negative?’ or ‘how can we be sure that it’s really the mechanism we think it is?’

While unglamorous, these types of experiments are the load-bearing Tupperware of larger bodies of science.

This is a good experiment. I like that they look at depleted soils, as it’s showing what happens to marginal soils when heated and helps fill in the picture of what we can expect to see during climate change. This also improves modeling accuracy.

Kentucky soils (or was it Georgian?) are depleted from cropping but are also naturally low in nutrients as they are in warmer climates and the nutrient pool has already been naturally depleted from pre-ag biomass and then by Ag itself.

They aren’t saying warming won’t increase emissions. They are saying you need warming and a system like the boreal, prairies or organic soils to see the impact.

Warming in these systems increases soil microbial activity and mineralisation of the organic matter which yields CO2

They probably aren’t actually doing this though - native seeds are a pain in the dick to collect - you’re not going to waste them strapping them to a dog lol

Poetic

@Five@slrpnk.net mod me

I don’t know why you were downvoted; you are right. Plant based is the way to go, and I say this as your typical omnivorous white dude. Until we get more buy in from people (changing diets) and from corporations, it’s unlikely to change, though.