24 November, 2003

Collecting Our Samples

Here is a summary of our general sampling procedure.

1. A circle with a diameter of two meters is marked off with blue flags and rocks.

2. Dr. Regina Redman cleans the shovels and sieves with ethanol.

3. We dig up the soil within the circle using shovels

4. The soil is homogenized, or mixed up, in order to hopefully get species living at a variety of surface levels

5. Spreading the soil so it is even

6. Before digging Dr. Connell measures the soil temperature and depth to frost.

7. Imagine dividing the circle into thirds. Our team will collect soil sample from each of the three “triads”. The northern most piece of the pie is site A. Then we move clockwise to sample sites B and C.

8. Soil is scooped with a small gardening shovel into the sieve, which filters out the larger parcticles.

9. The contents in the bottom tray are placed in a Nasco Whirl Bag. Two samples are collected from each third of the circle. How many bags do we need?