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Soil is a precious resource, yet most of us pay little attention to the stuff under our feet. It is the medium in which we grow our food and the foundation on which we build our cities. Soils filter our water, detoxify our pollutants, decompose our waste and hold vast reserves of the nutrients required for life. Soils are also fragile, taking thousands to million of years to develop but destroyed in minutes by human development.
For the past three years, myself and my fellow soil enthusiast Aurora have spent our Saturdays in December showing kids how awesome soil and the microbes that inhabit it actually are. We’ve developed a number of soil and microbiology activities to teach kids of all ages what soil actually is, who lives in it, and why we should value it. The take-home message? Don’t treat soil like dirt! Human beings (and nearly ever other species on earth) depend on soil for our very survival.
Here are some highlights from the last two weeks of the workshop:
We are even participating in an international, crowd-sourced science experiment known as the Tea Bag Index experiment to measure rates of decomposition in different soil types! This is a fun and easy experiment you can do in your backyard. All you need is a few teabags and a scale. Decomposition, the breakdown of once-living organic matter and conversion into soil organic matter, is an important step in the global carbon cycle that is driven primarily by soil microorganisms. Ultimately, decomposed carbon is respired back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Scientists are currently trying to understand how global climate change will affect decomposition and the microbial “respiration” of CO2 from soils. Projects such as the Tea Bag Index experiment provide scientists with valuable data that can be used to inform predictions about changes to the global carbon cycle. For more information on the Tea Bag Index experiment check out the website:
http://decolab.org/tbi/concept.html
Or click here to access the protocol and get involved directly!
http://decolab.org/tbi/protocol.html
Most importantly, our workshop strives to underscore the importance of soils in our everyday lives. Kids (and parents) often come unsure of what exactly soil is or why it should matter to them, and often enjoy the experience so much that they return week after week.
Live in the Philly area and got kids? Check us out, every Saturday for the rest of the month!
And since I can’t seem to stop geeking out about this stuff, here are some more cool resources to check out on soil science education:
wyrdscience 