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CSS 220 Midterm
Exam #1
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What moisture regime is a Calcic Paleustoll found in? | Ustic |
| What soil order will likely have a Bhs horizon in it? | Spodosols |
| How would you describe a natric horizon? | Btn |
| Which of the following soil orders is probably the most intensely weathered? | Ultisols |
| What is the soil order of a Cumulic Hapludox? | Oxisols |
| What is the subgroup of a Lamellic Glossudalf? | Lamellic Glossudalfs |
| You are researching a Typic Calciustalf. What features does this soil likely contain? | An argillic horizon and a pedogenic accumulation of calcium carbonate |
| Which of the following best describes the mollic epipedon? | Thick, dark, high in organic matter, high base saturation |
| What is the great group of a Vertic Argidurid? | Argidurids |
| Which of the following is a desert soil? | Aridisol |
| What color rule is the best for identifying prolonged wetness in a soil horizon (what color indicates it)? | Chroma <2 |
| A mineral grain is 1 micrometer in diameter. How would the USDA describe the category of soil separates that this particle represents? | Clay |
| You measure the amount of soil separates in a sample and find that you have (dry weights) 11 g of clay, 33 g of silt, and 4 g of sand. Using the USDA soil triangle, what is the texture class of this soil? | Silt loam |
| You collect an intact (i.e., unground) soil sample with a volume of 23 cubic centimeters (cc) and an oven-dry mass of 32 g. What is the bulk density of this soil (in g/cc)? | 1.4 g/cc |
| You have a container with a mass of 8.2 g. You record the moist mass as 156.5 g. You oven-dry the sample and find the new mass to be 132.3 g. The original sample had a volume of 98 cc. What is the bulk density of this soil sample (in g/cc)? | 1.27 g/cc |
| What particle density do we usually assume in soils (in g/cc)? | 2.65 g/cc |
| What type of soil structure should we see in a typical healthy A horizon (topsoil)? | Granular |
| Which of these textures is the finest (i.e., has the smallest particles on average)? | Silty clay |
| You are able to mold a soil sample like putty or artists' clay. What is the water content of this sample? | It is between the plastic limit and the liquid limit |
| A hydric soil has a hard marble-like object in it, cemented with iron and manganese oxides. When you break it open, it has rings that show layers. What is it? | Concretion |
| What is a reasonable room temperature in degrees Celsius? | 21°C |
| The iron in minerals like goethite and ferrihydrite is slowly reduced and removed from anoxic soils via microbial activity. As long as the soil still contains some of those minerals, what substance will probably remain oxidized in that soil profile? | Sulfate |
| After a burn, water beads on a soil surface. What property is this? | Hydrophobicity |
| Where is the most highly reduced part of a Winogradsky column (i.e., where is the Eh the most negative)? | The bottom |
| Plants use oxygen and produce carbon dioxide. | True |
| A graded slope at a construction site is covered in a poor soil that has a high content of a dark colored rocks. Even hardy trees that are planted on the slope overheat and die in the summer sun. How would you deal with this to vegetate the slope? | Spread straw or some other light-colored and inexpensive material over the surface in order to prevent it from absorbing as much energy from the sun. |
| When iron is reduced, what is the charge on the ion in the soil solution? | +2 |
| A wetland delineator applies a solution of alpha-alpha-dipyridyl solution to a sample of soil that they just dug up on a proposed building site. What are they looking for? | A pink color to indicate the presence of reduced iron in a hydric soil. |
| Plants use carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. | True |
| How should you mulch a tree? | Place a thin layer of mulch over the root zone, but keep it several inches from the trunk. |
| What are the rules called that soil scientists use to identify hydric soils based on their morphology? | Hydric Soil Indicators |
| What is the warmest slope aspect in Michigan? | Southern |
| What causes the seasons? | The tilt of Earth's axis makes different hemispheres point more towards or away from the sun along different parts of our orbit around the sun. |
| At a normal soil pH for our region, once all of the available iron is reduced in a wetland soil, what is the next preferred terminal electron acceptor? | Sulfate sulfur |
| What should you do if you have been growing potted plants indoors and are about to move them into the summer sun outside? | Harden them off slowly, in low natural light at first, then short periods in more intense light, over days or a few weeks. |
| What role does fire play in ecosystems? | It is required to scarify certain seeds that will not germinate without being heated by a fire, it releases nutrients from the biomass that burns, It prevents the buildup of dangerous stockpiles of fuel in dry landscapes. |
| Where does almost all of the energy on Earth come from? | The sun |
| Which of these plants are the most sensitive to growing with wet feet? | Sugar beets |
| You examine a tropical soil sample full of the mineral hematite. It has a particle density of 7.87 g/cc. The sample has a bulk density of 2.42 g/cc. What is its porosity? | 69.2% |
| Pedology is the study of what? | Soil |
| Which of the following experimental designs would be better for testing a hypothesis about the impact of a soil amendment like biochar on crop production? | Two nearly identical adjacent fields are identified. One is treated with biochar, while the other is not. They are otherwise treated the same as one another. Yields from these fields are carefully weighed and compared at the end of the growing season. |
| What is a scientific idea that is proposed to account for observations, but which has not yet been thoroughly tested by experiments? | Hypothesis |
| The purpose of an experiment is to prove that a hypothesis is true. | False |
| You can drop the lowest grade for one of your Excel assignments. | False |
| What should you do when you don't know a word used in class or the textbook? | Ask a classmate, Raise your hand and ask Dr. Wessel, Look it up in the book or SSSA glossary. |
| Eventually the Earth would be covered by a layer of corpses, feces, and dead tissue; no nutrients would remain available for further plant growth. What ecosystem service does soil provide to keep this horrifying (if absurd) scenario from happening? | Decomposition and nutrient recycling |
| How can we place monetary values on ecosystem services, so that resource managers and policy makers can better understand ecosystem degradation or enhancement? | Measure how much money people are willing to pay to go somewhere just to enjoy something, Calculate the replacement cost of lost ecosystem services, Measure the direct production value of a system, like the profit made off of a harvested crop. |
| You should come to class and participate in order to succeed in this class. | True |
| How many of the Activity assignments will be dropped when calculating the course grade? | 2 |
Created by:
isabellalar21
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