Reading(s)
Lab Goals & Objectives
Profile Horizon Delineation & Soil Integrity Assessment: Students will identify and delineate distinct soil horizons within a pit to evaluate the site’s soil profile integrity and history of disturbance.
Soil Color Interpretation & Biogeochemical Status: Students will use visual soil color variations across profile depth to infer soil organic matter accumulation, oxidation-reduction conditions, and degree of weathering.
Tactile Texture & Grain Size Characterization: Students will perform a "texture by feel" analysis to determine soil textural classes and identify physical drivers of water and nutrient availability.
Synthesizing Native Soil Constraints & Restoration Feasibility: Students will synthesize horizon depth, color, and texture observations to determine how native soil capabilities constrain potential restoration targets and overall project success.
Diagnosing Disturbance & Recommending Soil Interventions: Students will prescribe site-appropriate restoration interventions based on field-diagnosed soil limitations
Reflection Prompt
Describe the key visual and tactile features you observed across the soil horizons in the pit (e.g., horizon boundary distinctness, color shifts with depth, and grain size/texture by feel). How do these field observations reveal the site’s "pedomemory" - the historical footprint of past climate, vegetation, weathering, or human disturbance? How did you view soil before this lab? How has physically examining soil architecture and pedogenic processes challenged or shifted your personal definition of what makes an ecosystem "healthy" or "restorable"?
Materials, Links, Logistics, & General Itinerary (subject to change as needed)