BEGINNING YOUR INVESTIGATION
We are currently writing many new activities to make your GLOBE protocols
more exciting. One of these is about soils and their relationship to
soil moisture. When you choose a soil moisture site, it is always useful
to investigate the underlying soils first. Here are some questions you
might investigate and discuss - some will require you to dig or core into
the soil, others can be answered with samples from the surface:
- How many different soil layers (horizons) are there as you
go deeper into the soil?
- How deep is your soil?
- How much water can your soil hold?
- Does water enter (and leave) your soil quickly or slowly?
- What kind of materials weathered to become your soil?
(this will tell you something about the soil's composition)
- Describe the soil texture in terms of sand, silt and clay content?
(sand is gritty, silt is silky and clay is sticky feeling)
- What other characteristics do you see in each soil layer?
(such as: organic matter, roots, rocks, worm holes, nodules, etc.)
- What kinds of structure do the soil particles have?
(such as: grains with sharp or round edges, prisms, clumps together)
- What kind of vegetation is growing around your site?
- Describe your site's setting, particularly with respect to the soils
(such as: field, playground, lawn, forest, old dump, etc.)
This kind of information that helps put any subsequent soil moisture
measurements in a local perspective is very important to the scientist
using those measurements and is often called METADATA. Be on the look-out
for a GLOBE Web interface form that will allow you to share this kind of
information early next year.
Back to GLOBE home page
Last updated: 11/29/95
Comments? globe@hwr.arizona.edu