Digging up inactive prenart lysimeters!
Hello, hello! My name is Cailene Gunn. I am a rising junior at Bates College studying geology with a focus on environmental geochemistry! I hail from a small town in northern Connecticut where I grew up hiking, frolicking and enjoying the great outdoors. As much as I adore the beautiful rolling hills and farmlands of my hometown, I am thrilled to be spending my summer in the stunning state of New Hampshire with the White Mountains as my playground. Aside from hiking, I spend much of my free time painting mason jars, stargazing and listening to happy music. But when hard at work, it's all about the soils!
This summer I’m working with Dr. Scott Bailey on the soil water chemistry project. Soils are important indicators of the health and integrity of an ecosystem and the chemistry of soil water solution can provide valuable information about plant nutrient availability, pollutant transport and hydraulic processes within an ecosystem. Unfortunately, it is difficult to accurately obtain and determine the chemistry of soil solutions. The traditional method of lysimetry for soil extraction is expensive and typically limited to small-scale studies within research centers like Hubbard Brook. My job is to develop a technique called soil water expulsion (or "soil juicing," in more colloquial terms). Soil expulsion a unique methodology for extracting soil water in a non-invasive, relatively inexpensive manner. Soil expulsion allows one to saturate and expel solution from any soil sample from any site, so the development of this method has the potential to extend soil survey projects to broader, more accessible landscapes!
Soil expulsion experiment set up at the Forest Service Headquarters on a beautiful day
I'm currently in the protocol-building stage of my project. I've been busy testing the effects of saturation time, pressure and homogenization on the chemistry of the soil solution obtained through expulsion. Once I come up with a consistent, reproducible protocol, I will compare soil expulsion, zero-tension lysimetry and tension (prenart) lysimetry through various chemical analyses. If we conclude soil expulsion as a reliable technique, it could help further studies on the effects of pollution in forest ecosystems, stream ecology, anthropogenic perturbation on natural processes etc. Consequently, increased knowledge about these issues could lead to a better understanding of forest ecosystems and more effective policy implementations in the future.
Until the next post, thanks for reading and keep a look out for updates on my project and stories of exciting adventures to come!