The purpose of this lab is to separate soil by setting in water to find the % of various components. In this lab I learned a lot. I learned that there is a lot more stuff to the soil than we can see; there is floating leaf litter, Sunken leaf litter, silt and sand all in a jar of soil. However, it takes time to sort itself out and that is why we left it alone for a week so it could separate out into all the different layers.
The composition of the soil could effect organisms in the quadrat for many reasons. The composition effects the nutrients. Plants require a certain amount of nutrients to produce what they need to. The nutrients come from the decomposed soil so it has to be the right amount of decomposition that takes place.
We have mostly granite rocks in this area and soil derived from granite this effects us and plants in a big way. Granite rocks cause acid rain because of the chemicals that they that they give off into the air. A plant requires a pH of 6.8-7.0. The acid rain will change the pH so that it is not that.
Our soil component graph compared pretty much the same with the other graphs in our class. The only thing that was a little bit different was the floating leaf litter at the top of the jar. I think this was just because of the soil that we got and the way we got it.
This data effects people in many ways. It effects farmers and people that grow crops the most because their plants need a certain amount of nutrients to grow and produce what they need to produce. If this is different in any kind of way the plants will get either to much nutrients or to little nutrients that will kill it.
