Extremophiles

Extremophiles are organisms that thrive in the most extreme environment, conditions which would be detremental to any other life form on earth. A good example of an extremophile is a thermophile ( an organism that can thrive at temperatures between 60-80 degrees celcius; 113-176 degrees fairenhight).  These type of extremophiles are also archea, a type of bacteria. These bacteria are responisble for the bright colors of the Grand Prismatic Spring; as you see in the picture above. 

Testing your soil by hand

To diagnose your soil with your own hand you must follow these simple steps.  First take a handful of moist soil, move it around between your fingers.  If it is sticky and changes your hand colors is is clay based, if it is gritty and falls apart it is sandy and if it is slippery and contains small particles it is silt.  At the end of this testing if you ball it up and try to form something and it sticks it is clay, if it just falls apart it is sand. 

Soil texture diagnosis key

The three main components of testing soil are sand, clay and silt.  The realative proportion of these minerals is what determines the soil texture. 

Soil Map of Ga.

Generalized soil map of Georgia based on the STATSGO database

Munsell Soil Chart

Created by professor Albert H Munsell, the munsell color chart is a color space created to identify types of soil. The difference between his method and all of the others is that is uses three color dimensions; hue, value (lightness), and  chroma (color purity).  The Hue is measured by the degrees around the horizontal circles.  Value is measured vertically from 0 to 10, black to white.  Chroma is measured from the center out starting at gray (neutral) vertical axis.  You can see these three dimensions in the picture above.

Munsell Soil Chart

Georgia Red Clay

The most prominent soil here in Ga is known as red clay or ultisols, if your using the technical term.  Ultisols comes from strongly leached soils with a subsurface zone for clay accumulation and less than 35% base saturation. In simple terms this basically means the soil lacks nutrients and is not well aerated.  People who live in Georgia often have to use supplements to grow any kind of landscaping. 

12 SOIL ORDERS OF THE WORLD

Geocaching sites for lab (group 2) on 2/1/11

GPS mapping and scientific research

When we think of GPS most of us would automatically think, it goes in my car and tells me turn by turn exactly where to go, but they can be use for much more than that.  A good example of how global positioning systems can help the research of science and mapping is to look at Australia's way of tracking and researching the kangaroos.  They go out and capture the kangaroos.  When they have them captured they place a tracking collar on them using the GPS system.  With this they are able to track every move of each one of them and it allows the scientists to get a look at their life and better preserve them. They know if they have gotten hit by a car, where their feeding grounds are, the impact of high numbers of kangaroos in specific places and much more.  While the scientist are tracking the kangaroos they can also map their every movement with exact locations used on the map which allows them to retrace and keep track of the data and compare with newer maps and fresh data.  

Geocaching

Geocaching website

Geocaching is an outdoor activity where global positioning systems are used to hide and find "geocaches" or "chaches" anywhere in the world.  For the most part, the "chaches" are usually small waterproof containers used to store a list or log books to sign or some kind of symbol you can duplicate.  Some even contain trading items.  You use coordinates that are given to you to find the exact location of the hidden items.  There are currently over 100 countries on all seven continents participating in this sport.  After only 10 years there are over 1.2 million active geocachers.