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My name's Mickey Ransom. I'm a Professor of Soil Science in the Department of Agronomy
at Kansas State University. We're out here today on the Rannells Flint Hills Prairie
and this is a field trip that we're running associated with the
Soil Science Institute, a three-week-long workshop
for training for some of the professional soil scientists.
We have professional soil scientists from all over the U.S. here.
There are sixteen of them.
Fifteen of them work for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
and one works for the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Interior.
We're looking at a soil pit here.
The soil series is called Konza. It's a soil that's fairly extensive on
some of the broader ridge tops here in the Flint Hills.
We have a pit dug that's about six feet deep.
We're showing them
some of the different soil properties and this really gives them an opportunity
to see, here in the field, some of the things that we've been talking about
back in the classroom and in the laboratory. We've had lectures
related to pedology, soil classification, soil genesis, soil mineralogy, also
soil biology. We've had topics on soil fertility, soil chemistry,
soil quality. They've had a lecture on geomorphology. So they're getting an
all around overview of some of the topics that would be important to a
professional scientist.
My name is Neil Martin. I'm a soil scientist with NRCS
(Natural Resources Conservation Service) and I work in Findlay, Ohio.
We're here at the Soil Science Institute. Most of us are mid-career
or somewhere in that area and we're trying to
brush up on our knowledge of all things soils ... chemistry,
soil biology.
My name's Dillon Graham from Knoxville, Tennessee. NRCS, I guess they
like the structure ... they like us to come mid-career and sort of get
a science refresher. This is really, this is hands on. This is all that stuff
that we,
all the little things, all the little pieces of the puzzle that we forgot.
We all know what happens
when carbonates precipitate but we don't really know
how it happens. We know we can identify them, but if
we've got the formula in our heads, we can kinda tell what's going on,
so it gives us a lot more scientific context. While this is
just a week-and-a-half, I really feel empowered, in a sense.
It might be a bit dramatic but
you know you get confidence in this.
Your confidence sort of gets eroded
when you're just out doing fieldwork, when you're running transects,
when you're digging in the dirt.
And you're making descriptions like this. To make a description like this,
you really don't need much but a knife and your Field Book
and your eyes and your experience and that kind of thing.
Even though all these words are very
technical sounding.
I would recommend to any soil scientist mid-career that the Soil Science Institute
be a major part of their learning plan. A definite part of their learning plan.
My name is Jessica Jobe and I'm from Kerrville, Texas.
I've been with NRCS for eight years now.
Some of the soils that we see here in Kansas are similar to the soils that we have in
Texas.
And so seeing what people are doing here on the land in Kansas is something that
we can take back and
use in Texas as well. And maybe help landowners with new ideas that
they're doing here in Kansas that we're not doing in Texas yet.
I went down into the pit to look at the soil structure
and
the different components of the soil ... the texture and color which
gives you a good indication as far as organic matter is concerned.
Calcium carbonate, like lime,
and then salts which could have a huge impact as far as plant production
is concerned.
So those are the types of things that we're looking at when we go down in the
pit and describe the different kinds of soil. As far as our work with
Kansas State, it's critical to
NRCS so that we have
the best knowledge and the most current
knowledge and information that we can pass on to the producers so that they're
all up-to-date and we're not using fifty-year-old practices. It's critical
for us to know what kind of research is going on and
Kansas State has done a really good job of keeping us informed as far as what's
going on and the kinds of things that they're learning with their research.
It's all part of a cooperative organization that's called the
National Cooperative Soil Survey,
that really involves the different federal agencies that work in the
Soil Survey Program.
That would be the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Bureau of Land
Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs are also involved with the Soil
Survey Program, the U.S. Forest Service, and then various state agencies, usually the
land grant university
in each of the states also cooperates with the National Cooperative Soil Survey.
And Kansas State University,
K-State Research and Extension ... we're one of the cooperators.
It's an honor for us to have an opportunity to host this workshop.