How do we determine different soil types, their functions, and the life they support?

“Next May, the yellowwood flowered early and profusely. Thousands of fragrant white blooms hung in long clusters; petals covered bricks, blew across grass. How beautiful, people said. How sad, though. Several years’ bud scars bunched up against each twig’s growing tip. Abundant flowers signaled a dying, and seeds found no purchase in the plaza. People admired the tree and walked on; they had lost the language that gives tongue to its tale. Once a yellowwood stood. No more. And few knew why.” — Anne Spirn, Language of Landscape

✋ Multi-Session 🥰 Ages 8+ 🕐 1.5–2 Hours 👩‍👦‍👦 up to 15 Participants 🍎 1–2 Facilitators 🎨 Craft Materials

Supply Kit

In this workshop, we will begin to understand the diverse functions and roles of soils—the foundation of all terrestrial ecosystems—and the types of life they support. We will learn to categorize various soils and the species contained therein, and begin to unravel how urban environments shape soil structure and function.

More about this zine

This zine introduces the diverse functions of soil and why they are critical for ecosystem health. It also provides an outline of how to determine what a given soil sample is composed of and how these different compositions permit different types of life.

Introductory Activity: Soil Categorization

Suggested Timing: 40 minutes

We suggest setting your room up with workspaces for small groups of 2–3 participants. Each workspace should have one large soil triangle drawing, some pens and pencils, and 4–5 soil sample jars containing the various pre-collected soils.

Getting Started (10min) When participants first arrive, hand out copies of the Feeling and Soils zine and make sure everyone has their field journal. Encourage participants to pair-up and spend 5 minutes looking through the zine. They should discuss amongst themselves any questions or observations they might have. Next, using the zine as a jumping off point, spend another 5 minutes as a full-group discussing the functions of soils, why they are important, and the different components that make up soil (sand, silt, clay).

Soil Categorization Demos (10min) Introduce soil triangles. Demonstrate (with hands-on examples) two different methods for categorizing soil—touch testing and soil shakes.

Small Group Exploration (20min) Have participants work in their small groups to categorize the group's 4–5 soil samples by first using the touch test method and placing them on the soil triangle. Then let participants add water to their soil jars, shake, and let them settle a bit before comparing results.

Group Discussion (10min) Let each group share out a little about how they categorized their samples—what was their thought process? How did they decide where to categorize the soil? What did the different tests reveal?

Workshop Musings

• What are the different kinds of soils that exist in our neighborhood?
• What are they made of, and what roles do they play in our environment?
• What does it mean for the environment if the soil is mostly sand? Mostly clay? Mostly silt?
• How might the soil impact (or be impacted) by the surrounding environment?
• What does the composition of a soil tell us about the type of life it can support?
• How do urban soils differ from other types of soil?

There are two quick and simple ways to categorize soil with touch testing: First, by creating soil 'rubbings' on paper (to assess soil particulate size), and second by clumping the soil together using our hands (to assess soil moisture).

To complete a soil rubbing, place a few pinches of soil in a small mound on a sheet of paper. Using your fingertips, rub the soil into the paper until it is separated as much as possible, into its smallest components (this will often leave a cast on the paper). Sand, silt, and clay have different particle sizes, and so you can use this test to estimate the size of the particles present in a given sample (particles will also have different textures depending on their relative size).

To complete a clump test, fill your palm with the soil sample and compress it by closing your fist. Squeeze as tightly as you can! Then, open up your hand and see how well the soil sticks to itself. Moist soils will clump easily, forming a ball, while dry soils will not hold any shape. Soils with smaller particular sizes are able to grab onto water more easily — clayey soil holds the most water, while sandy holds the least (with loamy soil holding an amount somewhere in-between).

A soil shake test can show you the different elements that make up a soil. After separation of the soil components, you can also cross-reference the relative composition of a given soil sample with your soil triangle predictions from touch testing.

How to run a soil shake test:

1. Collect some soil in a jar (fill it about 1/3 with soil) and then fill the remaining space with water.
2. Tighten the cap and give the jar a good shake for about 30 seconds.
3. Let the jar sit, undisturbed, for up to 48 hours (though you will see some stratification in only a few minutes!).
4. After letting your jar sit, you'll notice the soil separate into 3 distinct layers—the bottom layer is sand, the middle layer is silt, and the top layer is clay.
5. Calculate the % of each layer in the soil, and use the soil triangle to determine what kind of soil it is.

For this field exercise, participants will visit two field sites, differing in the type of vegetation they have (e.g. a basketball court next to a construction site and a landscaped courtyard), collecting a soil sample as well as a plant specimen (or the image of the plant if it's not possible to collect) at each site.

We recommend having your group divide up into teams of two or three. Each team gets a shovel and 3-4 empty jars for collecting soil samples. Make sure participants bring their field journals with them to record observations of the types of life found near each soil sample site. As a facilitator, you may also want to have a camera (and mobile photo printer, if you have one!) for snapping some photos.

The goal of the exercise is to collect diverse soil samples from your two field sites, as well as document the type of life that soil supports. For example, if you find a street-adjacent compacted soil sample, dig a few inches down to collect the soil itself, but also collect a spontaneous urban species growing in it. If there is nothing growing in a soil sample, make a note of that in the field journal (this condition is equally telling of the health of that soil sample). If the species is too large to collect (for example, a tree), take an image of the life form fostered by the soil, or utilize another form of method like bark rubbings or drawings.

Do some on-site analysis in the field: clump the soil together in your hands; predict how well or not it might retain water; predict its relative composition of clay, silt, and sand; try to imagine how this sample of soil is changing over time—what is its future or past?

For the come-together activity, we recommend staying outside (weather permitting), perhaps using a picnic table or shady area to sit down together as a group.

Before starting, have each small group perform a soil shake by adding water to each of their collected soil samples. This way, the soil can start to form some initial layers by the time this activity ends. We also let participants take their soil jars home with them for evaluation after they've fully settled.

Then, have each small group of participants show & tell about their collected soil samples, where they came from, what types of species they found growing nearby, and some guess as to what type of soil they think it might be. Use the prompts below for some further discussion!

Prompts for Show & Tell Discussion:

• Which types of soil did you encounter most in your sampling? Wet, clay-heavy soil? Sandy, dry soil? Rich, moist, and smooth soil?
• What patterns did you notice between the type of soil you found and how deep or wide you dug your hole?
• What types of plants grew in the types of soil that you collected? If there were no plants growing there, can you guess why?
• Can you notice any patterns between types of soil you collected and the type plants growing in it? (For example, did taller plants grow in sandy soil? Did flowers grow in clay-heavy soil?)