Geo 400 - French Creek Watershed Research Program

Physical Soil Characteristics at
Bousson Environmental Research Reserve

Figure 1 - Location map of soil sampling sites. BERR is located on the Cochranton, PA 7.5 minute quadrangle.

Figure 2 - Students taking soil core samples

In the fall of 2000, the hydrogeology class (Geo 400) collected soil cores at two locations within Bousson Environmental Research Reserve (BERR) to examine soil physical properties as a function of topography. Figure 1 is a location map of the upland and lowland sites.

Soil cores were collected by the students using a xxxxx. Each sample was collected in a x by y cm brass ring. Field-moist samples were weighed on a portable balance (to the nearest 0.01 g), oven dried overnight at 105° C and reweighed.

Four soil properties were calculated for each sample: dry bulk density (ρ_b), porosity (n), gravimetric water content (θ_g) and volumetric water content (θ_v). Equations for these calculations can be found in section 6.2 of Fetter (2001). Tables 1 and 2 are the results of these calculations.

References cited:
Fetter, C. W., 2001. Applied Hydrogeology (fourth edition). NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. 598 pp.

Physical characterization of soils, Bousson Environmental Research Reserve (BERR)

Table 1: Raw data from collected sediment samples at a) upland and b) lowland site.

a)	Field core	Tare wt.	Field moist	Oven-dried
Depth, cm¹	& foil, g	of foil, g	sample, g	sample, g
39.5	64.8	3.4	61.4	52.8
47.5	136	4.8	131.2	120
52.5	162.1	2.7	159.4	149

¹ All sampled intervals spanned 5 cm; value listed is the midpoint of each sample core.

b)	Field core	Tare wt.	Field moist	Oven-dried
Depth, cm¹	& foil, g	of foil, g	sample, g	sample, g
22.5	182.6	4	178.6	149.5
27.5	189.9	3.6	186.3	156.8
36.5	132.2	4	128.2	110.6
41.5	150	4.2	145.8	128.5
51.5	185.5	3.4	182.1	155.2

Table 2: Physical soil properties as a function of depth.
		ρ_b	n	θ g	θ _v
Upland	Depth, cm¹	g/cm³	cm³/cm³	cm³/cm³	cm³/cm³
	39.5	0.54	0.80	0.14	0.08
	47.5	1.22	0.54	0.09	0.10
	52.5	1.52	0.43	0.07	0.10

Lowland	22.5	1.52	0.43	0.16	0.25
	27.5	1.60	0.40	0.16	0.25
	36.5	1.13	0.57	0.14	0.15
	41.5	1.31	0.51	0.12	0.16
	51.5	1.58	0.40	0.15	0.23

Mean value, upland		1.37	0.48	0.08	0.10
Mean value, lowland		1.43	0.46	0.14	0.21

Download these data (Excel file)