Question: What do you do if you are a small team, limited on time and about to carry out a lot of detailed soil surveying?
Answer: You ask the wonderful scientists at the British Society of Soil Science to train up some amazing volunteers for you! So that’s exactly what we did.
We spent two days in and around the Welney Wetland Centre with two scientists from the British Society of Soil Science (BSSS), who taught several volunteers how to perform accurate soil surveys. These volunteers will now be able to join us on our soil surveying mission, which is an essential part of our Fenland opportunity mapping project.
The first morning started with a presentation about the importance of accurate soil surveying, before delving into what we might expect to find in each soil horizon. The afternoon session covered how to properly describe soil colour and texture, as well as learning how to create proper auger holes.
The second day focused on honing our volunteers’ practical skills. For this, they were shown fields with differing soil types (including one peaty field!), so they could see for themselves just how much the properties of soil can vary.
We can’t wait to begin working with our volunteers and would like to give them a massive thank you for giving up their time up to help us. We’d also like to say a big thank you to the BSSS for providing such an engaging and enjoyable two days.
We also hope to work with BSSS to deliver further training in the future!