FAQs (most recent posted at top)

Question18SEP2021: How many practice pits will there be?

Answer18SEP2021: Expect your team to be describing 4 practice pits a day Monday-Wednesday for a total of 12 practice pits. The last practice pit of each day will be a Jumble Judging pit. That will count as one of the 4 practice pits.

Question 08SEP2021: When will we get a key for the Most Probable Native Plant Community interpretation?

Update 10SEP2021: There is now a description/key for the most probable native plant community interpretation provided in v2.0 of the guidebook.

Answer 08SEP2021: I'm working on it. Hopefully by next week. Will be incorporated into the next version of the guidbooke.

Question 08SEP2021: Are you providing a simplified classification key for the contest?

Answer 08SEP2021: I would actually prefer not to. I think simplified keys have in the past led to some strange results and sometimes lock us in to counterintuitive classifications. We will use Keys to Soil Taxonomy (2014) to classify all of the soils. I would encourage coaches to share a simplified key with you team based on the Great Groups present on the scorecard. The Illustrated Keys are a great way to start making a simplified key. Maybe some coaches would be willing to share a simplified key together. Those simplified keys will likely be correct 90% of the time and can help your students. BUT there may be some nuances in classification in a very limited number of the practice pits that you will need to deal with on a case-by-case basis. I would be happy to provide an explanation for how we reached our classification in those cases.

Question 26AUG2021: Do you have the Soil Explorer TPK files for Minnesota so that I can load them on our iPads to use on practice days?

Answer 10SEP2021: There is one tile package (TPK) for Minnesota available - it is the Draft Dominant Soil Parent Materials Map. If your students download the Soil Explorer App, they will find it in "North-Central DSPM Drafts", then "Minnesota Dominant Soil Parent Materials". Note that you can also access the North Central Soil Orders and Drainage Class maps through the North-Central DSPM Drafts collection as well.

Question 17AUG2021: Aquic Conditions option in section D, diagnostic horizons and characteristics. In previous contests and practices, it has not always been clear when to select it based on wetness class and/or redox features in the morphology section, and has been a confusing issue for the NRCS folks that often help with the contest. Keys to Soil Taxonomy states there is no definition since aquic conditions and the defining characteristics change based on the different groups at various levels of classification.

Update 10SEP2021: Edits have been made to the guidebook in the Soil Wetness Class section and the note on Aquic Conditions in the Soil Classification section. The Soil Wetness Class section now includes the following text:

"The shallowest depth of either:

distinct or prominent chroma ≤ 2 and value ≥ 4 redox features (i.e. redox depletions) due to wetness, which occupy greater than 2% of the horizon (i.e. are recorded as C (common) or M (many)) will be used as a criterion to determine the depth of the wet state for this contest. If measured depth falls on the boundary between two classes, use the less wet class on the scorecard. For the purposes of this contest, no redox features will be interpreted as relict redox features.
color value and chroma of 2/1, 2.5/1 or 3/1 containing distinct or prominent redox concentrations and occurring contiguously above a horizon with a reduced matrix."

The note on Aquic Conditions now reads:

"NOTE: Aquic conditions may occur at any depth in the soil, and their presence alone does not necessarily imply an Aquic soil suborder or Aquic soil moisture regime. Rather, aquic conditions must occur within a requisite depth of the soil surface to affect soil classification. The duration of saturation required for creating aquic conditions varies, depending on the soil environment. For the purposes of this contest, aquic conditions should be marked:

whenever a soil horizon has 50% or more (by area in a horizon) redox depletions. For the purposes of this contest, this will generally correspond with a reduced matrix and have a matrix color value and chroma combinations of 4/1, 4/2, 5/1, 5/2, 6/1, 6/2, 7/1, 7/2, 7/3, 8/1, 8/2, or 8/3. Note that, depending on the depth of aquic conditions, this may or may not affect classification.
whenever horizons with color value and chroma of 2/1, 2.5/1 or 3/1 contain distinct or prominent redox concentrations and occur contiguously above a horizon with a reduced matrix. Note that, depending on the depth of aquic conditions, this may or may not affect classification."

Answer 08SEP2021: Thank you for this question - yes this is always an issue. My plan is to stick as closely as possible to the concepts/intent in Soil Taxonomy. This is what is currently in the guidebook (p. 28) "Aquic conditions may occur at any depth in the soil, and their presence alone does not necessarily imply an Aquic soil suborder or Aquic soil moisture regime. Rather, aquic conditions must occur within a requisite depth of the soil surface to affect soil classification. The duration of saturation required for creating aquic conditions varies, depending on the soil environment. For the purposes of this contest, aquic conditions should be marked whenever a soil horizon has 50% or more (by area in a horizon) redox depletions. For this purposes of this contest, this will generally correspond with a reduced matrix. Note that this may or may not correspond directly with soil wetness class and may or may not affect classification." HOWEVER: We might run into situations where dark mollic colors mask aquic conditions as defined above (50% or more (by area in a horizon) redox depletions, i.e. a reduced matrix). IF we run into that situation, we may revise the rules for aquic conditions to include any dark colored horizons that contain redox concentrations IF they occur directly above a depleted matrix. In this case we will revise the guidebook accordingly. This rule would also then apply to soil wetness class.