hey,

im taking geography class and i need you to do this activity. this assignment has to be two pages, here is the guideline below:

For this activity you will need to use a shovel and find a place that is safe to dig. The best and easiest place may be along a river bank or in a road cut on some rural quiet road away from traffic, where soil is exposed in a vertical cliff. You can also dig in the middle of a farm field (your own, or ask for a permission from the owner!) or in an area outside of city where there is no chance to hit a gas line or a buried cable. Do not attempt this activity in town – there are lots of potential hazards underground and normally you are supposed to call for a permit before digging. You do not need to dig too deep. A hole that goes through A and B horizons should be enough – 3-4 feet deep would be great. Note that if you use a roadcut, you would need to carefully remove some of the material on the vertical wall to make soil look fresh.

Your hole needs to be wide enough to allow you to take a few photos from the side. A selfie stick would work great for that! Lower the camera into the hole and take photos.

Use pp. 352-356 in your textbook for explanation of some of the soil characteristics.

In your report, describe the following:

• Soil profile: do you see any distinct horizons in the soil?
• Top of soil: do you see a lot of organic material, litter, twigs, etc.?
• What plants, if any, grow on top? Is this a natural community or a human-modified one?
• What color is the top soil (A horizon)?
• What color is the subsoil (B horizon)?
• Do you see a lot of evidence for animal activity in the soil?
• What do you suppose is the soil texture of your top soil (see fig. 356). To answer the question properly would require processing of soil through a series of sieves which you may not have. However, you can run a simple test, as described here:
  http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/soils/edu/?cid=nrcs142p2_054311
• What is the structure of your top soil (see fig. 13.16 for examples)?
• What is the soil order? There are 12 major ones in the USA explained here – https://www.soils.org/discover-soils/soil-basics/soil-types
• Do you think your soil is fertile and good for farming?
• If you want to find out the more detailed soil name, use the following website to look up your area on a local map
  http://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/HomePage.htmClick on Start WSS green button, wait for the map to load, zoom in on a local area where you were digging, draw an area of interest (AOI) red rectangle around the local area and generate Soil Map. It will have polygons for each local soil type described in a legend. please don’t bid if you cannot do it