Soil Extraction

0. Survey

Take a general survey of the plot of land you are going to sample. You want to be aware not to sample close to fences,trees, and any areas that animals use to urinate or defecate. The three samples should be spaced out among the property with these boundaries in mind.

1. Flags

Depending of the location, you may have to sample near a wall or tree. Using a flags as markers, we equaly placed them on plot in oreder to gain an average for detecting the nutritional value of the soil.

2. Auger

A metal rod can be used to test soil for depth penetration and to see whether there is any obstuctions in the soil.

Take soil collection auger and insert into collection site. Push down as far as you can in order to reach the desired depth of at least 9 inches. Once the desired depth is reached, rotated the auger 360 degrees before removing the auger.

3. Ruler

Use a ruler to measure the depth of the sample. The “sweet spot” or the area of the core sample you want to use for processing is from the 6.25to 8.25 inches.

4. Soil sample

Use a clean utensil and a clean sample bag to gather and store your soil sample. The ideal amount of soil to gather from the auger is at least 1 tablespoon.

5. Cleaning

It is important to clean your tools after each sample. Rinsing with deionized filtered water is recommended.

6. Owner Survey

The owner of the plot of land fills out a survey in order for us to understand the relationship they have with the soil.

7. Sample Bag

Once three samples have been taken from the location, they are consolidated into a clean sample bag. The bag is labeled with the sample location, name and sample number.

8. Geolocation

From the location a picture taken on a cellphone is GEO tagged in order to acurately plot the location of the sample on a map.

9. Weather

The NOAA Weather App on a cellphone was used to gather important weather information from the location.

Sample collection included: Astoria, Brown, RedHook, East NYC, English Kills, Flushing, Fragale, Harlem, Gowanus, Chelsea, Fenker, Queens,and South Bronx

Forms

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Experiments & Protocols