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Welcome
Welcome to the home page of the Oregon Society of Soil Scientists (OSSS). It is our goal to introduce ourselves, and to share general information and local issues related to soils. Your comments and questions are welcome. Write to us at osss@peak.org or for a more timely response to a question please send emails to the appropriate board member listed below under "2008 Officers".
The OSSS flyer introduces our organization, and is available as a glossy brochure free to anyone interested. To view its contents click here: OSSS Flyer . To request copies send email to osss@peak.org
For your viewing pleasure, here is a very colorful General Soil Map of Oregon A small copy of this map is printed in the OSSS flyer.
OSSS has a companion web page at Microsoft's MSN groups site. This page provides clubs with abilities such as chat, pictures, calendar, message board, etc. It is filled with interesting soils related web links. See it at:
http://groups.msn.com/OregonSocietyofSoilScientists/home.htm
Current News
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2008 Summer Tour Scheduled for August 21 and 22, Corvallis and Vicinity!
Hey Society Members: We have a great Summer Tour shaping up! I hope all of you will consider participating this year (Friday, August 22, 9:00 AM – 6:30 PM) as it is going to be interesting, fun, and delicious! Transportation, lunch, and dinner all included!!! I really look forward to seeing all of you again. As you may recall, this year’s Summer Tour theme is Alternative Agriculture: Sustainable, Organic, and Biodynamic. We will be visiting a number of Corvallis and Albany area farms where we will see an incredible diversity of farming approaches and methods – and it’s all about soil. Local production of food will be increasingly important as food and fuel costs continue to rise. The post-industrial era is upon us and the world is headed toward large-scale shifts that will have big impacts on how and where we get our food and live our lives – change is coming! Whether that change is painful and disruptive or exciting and inspiring is largely up to how we prepare for it. Fortunately, there has already been a small group of people investing their time and creative energy for the challenges that lie ahead. Oregon is well known as a place where social experiments and innovation thrive and has more small farms per capita than nearly any state in the US. Because of this small group of forward-thinking Oregonians, small farms and local production are well situated to step it up when the inevitable disruptions occur.
The OSSS summer tour ‘08 will offer just a small sampling of the many farms that have been doing this important groundwork. We will visit sustainable, organic, and biodynamic farms as well as have some great food and drink. Get on board the bus and ready yourself for the future! Our tour begins at 9:00 AM on August 22, as we meet on the OSU Campus at the OSU Compost Observatory and Outdoor Teaching Laboratory (Yes, we have one here!). There is free parking on campus in the student lots (see map below). A light lunch and beverages will be provided around 12:00; bring a snack if you don’t plan on having a big breakfast. After touring farms we will end up at Gathering Together Farms in Philomath for a fantastic dinner and grain-based beverages at GTF’s renowned farm restaurant (all included in the registration fee)!
Whether or not you are traveling from far afield, please consider joining us Thursday evening (around 6:00 PM) at Squirrel’s Tavern in downtown, cosmopolitan Corvallis. They have great home cooking and a fabulous variety of northwest taps flowing! There are a number of lodging and camping options in the Corvallis area. The Benton County Fairgrounds has RV and tent sites with new showers for $15-$25/night (http://www.bentoncountyfair.com/oaks/rates.php) and there is the new Hilton Garden Inn adjacent to the OSU Campus if you’re looking for comfort – 541-752-5000. Really, there are a lot of options, please contact me if you need some assistance.
We are also hosting an optional Corvallis Farmers’ Market visit on Saturday morning (August 23) where you can stock up on fabulous summer produce from some of the very same growers that you will have visited the previous day! The Corvallis Farmers’ Market is really taking off and should be at its peak in late August – great food, music, and it’s right on the historic Corvallis waterfront.\
AND PLEASE, REMEMBER TO REGISTER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Deadline for registration is August 15 if you want to be included in the drawing for the super secret prizes we have yet to think about (!)
Sincerely Your President - James Cassidy
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2008 OSSS Winter Meeting
Urban/Soil Interface
by Ed Horn
The 2008 Oregon Society of Soil Scientist winter meeting was held on the coast at the Agate Beach Best Western Hotel located north of Newport, Oregon. Past president Will Austin, put together a great meeting with an amazing group of speakers focusing on "The Rural/Urban Interface." On Wednesday evening we had a bonfire out on the beach. The weather was clear and the stars were out. We watched the fire pop and crackle, listened to the sounds of the surf breaking on the beach, and quenched our thirst with powerfully good refreshments. This was a welcome chance to meet new people and get caught up with the latest happenings.
Thursday morning, Fungai Mukome started off the 1st lineup of speakers with his talk on Soil Water Movement in Fragipan Soils and Fertilizer Transport. Fungai graduated from the University of Zimbabwe with a BS degree in Chemistry and is now in his final year as a PhD graduate student in Environmental Sciences and Management at Portland State University. He was able to measure and show us how moisture fluctuates in a Typic Fragixeralf, using a Stevens Monitoring Systems "Hydra Probe II." He also talked about his current avenue of research, the transport of trace metals from phosphate fertilizers.
Next was Mike Logan. Mike is an undergraduate intern from the OSU-Cascades campus. He talked about how stream diversions have created low water flows in the central part of the Whychus Creek watershed. High water temperatures associated with these low flows is affecting the quality of steelhead spawning, migration and rearing habitat.
The third speaker was Steve Deghetto. Steve is the Parks Operations Supervisor for the City of Corvallis and he talked about strategies and concerns for managing an urban park system. Primary management concerns are: impacts to vegetation, impacts to historic site hydrology, water quality to adjacent urban streams, and soil erosion and sedimentation. He pointed out that a typical urban soil can shed 55 to 75 percent of its moisture over the soil surface.
Batting cleanup was Daniel Moreno, our new Vice President Elect. Daniel is a contractor with the Oregon DEQ Onsite Waste Water Treatment Program. He specializes in evaluation, permitting, and construction inspections of septic systems. He gave us a clean and interesting presentation about the Oregon’s DEQ Onsite Waste Water Program. His topics included septic tank and drain field basics and important soil characteristics to consider for sighting drain fields. These characteristics include: depth to water table and or redoxomorphic features, effective soil depth (to clay pans, hard pans), soil texture, structure, color, and consistence.
After a tasty lunch, the afternoon speaker lineup started with Mark Havel. Mark is a forestland owner in the Oregon coast range and is an engineering graduate from Oregon State University. He spoke on Sustainability in Oregon’s Forests and brought a number of publications, including "Sustainability and the Global Environment" and "Fire in Oregon’s Forests."
Erin Shroll is a horticulturalist and was the senior gardener at Berry Botanic Gardens for two and a half years. She talked about "Green Roofs" or growing vegetation on top of buildings. We found out that not only can you grow food on top of roofs, but that it also helps save on cooling and energy costs during the hot summer months. Pumice soil mixtures are popular growth media for green roofs as it reduces the weight.
Renee Stoops is currently the director of the Sustainable Plant Research and Outreach Program (SPROut) at Chemeketa Community College. Her topic was "Urban Applications for Ecological Horticulture." She talked about phytotechnologys, which is using plants to solve engineering and environmental problems, such as green roofs, constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment, etc.
The final talk was given by Ralph Bloemers, a staff attorney at the Crag Law Center. He talked about the "Aftermath of 2004 Ballot Measure 37." His firm represents local groups throughout Oregon free of charge in their efforts to protect valuable resource land from the onslaught of development since passage of Measure 37.
At our evening banquet, speaker Doug Wilson gave an interesting talk on the "Archeology of a Chinook fur Trade Site at the Mouth of the Columbia River." This site was discovered from a highway construction project and is located just across the river from our 2007 winter meeting site in Astoria. Doug talked about unearthing part of an ancient Chinook plank house and the discovery of numerous artifacts from the earliest days of the fur trade, including Chinese coins, English ceramics, Hungarian beads, gunflints, musket balls, fragments of mirror glass, and nails from ships. Also, much was learned about plank house construction from this dig.
The evening’s program continued with Will presenting awards to the 2008 JB Good and OSSS scholarship recipients. Our scholarship winners are David Rand, Laura Diugolecki, and Sabrina Beske.
David is a post-baccalaureate student in the Crop and Soil Science Department at Oregon State University and is a member of the OSU soil judging team. He also has a Bachelor’s in music from the University of Oregon and is the one that played the violin for us during the banquet. He has a good conservation ethic, enjoys working with maps and classifying soils, and hopes to do soil survey work after graduation.
Laura is a first year graduate student seeking a master’s degree in Forest Resources at Oregon State University and is pursuing a minor in crop and soil science. Her interests are in ecological restoration and she will be working on a vernal pool restoration project in the high desert of eastern Oregon. She was involved with the AmeriCorps program in Northern Arizona, which involved restoring a ponderosa pine ecosystem.
Sabrina is an undergraduate at Oregon State University and started her studies as a General Agriculture major but recently switched to Crop and Soil Science. Her interests are in agriculture, mainly crop production. She has worked with local farmers in seed crop production and is looking forward to continuing her education in this field.
On Friday, we started a new day and a new lineup of speakers. Ron Reuter led off—he is Assistant Professor of Natural Resources at the OSU-Cascades campus in Bend, Oregon. Ron also loves money and is our current OSSS treasurer. Ron’s presentation was about ground penetrating radar and how it can be used to see what is in the soil without digging hundreds of soil pits. GPR works best in coarse sandy textured soils and was tested out in the Lapine area on a logged out piece of BLM land south of Bend.
Markus Kleber was our next speaker. Markus is an Assistant Professor in the Crop and Soil Science Department at Oregon State University. He received his Soil Science PhD from Universitat Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany and has worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a Geological Scientist in the Earth Science Division. Markus gave us an amazing talk, taking us down to the molecular level, showing how it is possible to map out and determine on a mineral grain the affinity that organic carbon has for various mineral surfaces.
Mark Johnson talked about ecosystem services and soil carbon storage. Mark is a research soil scientist with the Western division of the Environmental Protection Agency. Ecosystem services are the output of ecosystem functions that support human welfare into the future. Soil along with carbon sequestration plays a large part in providing these services.
Melanie Malone was our last speaker and is currently pursuing an MS degree in Soil Science at Oregon State University. Melanie recently won an award for her presentation "Predictive Soil Mapping in the Fremont National Forest, South Central Oregon." She presented her talk and showed us how remote sensing technologies along with predictive modeling can help us be more efficient and consistent in delineating soils over large areas.
Jay Noller exposed his artistic side, showing us an example of an earth painting he did using colors from a Jory soil. Very nice, Jay! For our meeting, Jay provided a canvas, soil materials of various colors and textures with binders to allow some of our more creative members to try their hand at making an earth painting. Are you wondering what this masterpiece looks like? Later!
Now it was time for the field trip led by James Cassidy. James spread his hands wide and looked into the sky and the clouds opened up and let loose with gale force winds and rain. James’ talents, along with being our new OSSS president, include making rain for organic crops and field trips. The first stop was looking at a road cut near Seal Rock, showing various stages of iron cementation. Frank Reckendorf talked about the fifth soil forming factor "Time" and how soils are aged and put into time sequences based on soil color and degree of iron cementation. The next stop was at Yachats State Park. Rob Witter, the regional coastal geologist of the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, led a short discussion of coastal geology and debris fans visible from the site between wind gusts. In his current mapping, he is trying to age the debris fans and is hoping to use soil development on those fans as another indicator to verify fan age. The last stop was the Sea Lion Caves. This tourist mainstay is one of the largest sea caves in the world and the only known sea lion cave rookery on the mainland. It was created 25 million years ago from basalt flows, intersecting fractures, and scouring energy from the ocean. The cave offers California and Stellar Sea Lions protection from stormy weather during the fall and winter months. We were protected also!
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Dates to Remember
July 18, 2008: Symposium "Soil: Sustaining Life on Planet Earth; Washington D.C. Information available at http://www7.nationalacademies.org/usnc-ss/Soil_Sustains.html
July 19, 2008: Smithsonian Soil Exhibit Opens; Washington D.C. Information available at
http://forces.si.edu/soils/July 24-26, 2008: Washington Society of Professional Soil Scientists Summer Tour. Information available at
http://www.ieway.com/wspss/wspss_events.htmlAugust 21-23, 2008: Oregon Society of Soil Scientists Summer Tour; Corvallis, Oregon. Information available at
http://osss.peak.org/October 5-9, 2008: Joint meeting between The Geological Society of America (GSA), Soil Science Society of America (SSSA), American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies with the Gulf Coast Section of SEPM (GCAGS), hosted by the Houston Geological Society (HGS); Houston, Texas. Information available at:
https://www.acsmeetings.org/February 18-20, 2009: Oregon Society of Soil Scientists Winter Meeting; Portland, Oregon.
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On July 18, 2008, the U.S. National Committee for Soil Science (USNC/SS) of the National Academy of Sciences will be hosting a symposium, "Soil: Sustaining Life on Planet Earth." The symposium is co-sponsored by the Soil Science Society of America and the International Union of Soil Sciences. The symposium will be held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. This symposium compliments the opening of the Smithsonian Soils Exhibit - " Dig It ! The Secrets of Soil" please read below. If you are going to be in the Washington DC area on the 18th please consider attending this symposium and the Smithsonian Exhibit opening on July 19th, 2008.
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Soils Exhibition to Debut at the Smithsonian July 19, 2008
Message from Sara Uttech, Communications Manager, Soil Science Society of America.
Get the "dirt" on soil at an exciting new exhibition called "Dig It! The Secrets of Soil" at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C., opening July 19, 2008.
This 5,000-square-foot exhibition will focus on how soil impacts all life on earth. Visitors will use interactive displays to look at the science of soil, from agriculture to its role as "secret ingredient" in medicines, food, wine, textiles, paint, cosmetics, and pottery, as well as in supporting life and death. Hands-on models will demonstrate the roles of soil around the house and in public spaces like dams, playing fields, and roads.
This major new exhibition will explain differences among soil types, featuring soil samples from all U.S. states and territories and features a world map of soils. The exhibition will be housed at the NMNH through January 2010, then travel to museums around the country through September 2013.
For visuals and more information about the exhibition, visit the NMNH site at http://forces.si.edu/soils and the Soil Science Society of America’s site at http://www.soils.org/smithsonian. High-resolution photos are available online at http://newsdesk.si.edu/photos/nmnh_dig_it.htm.
On behalf of the Soil Science Society of America, Madison, WI,
Very best regards,
Sara
Sara Uttech, Communications Manager
Soil Science Society of America
677 South Segoe Road, Madison, WI 53711
608-268-4948, suttech@soils.org
Dig It! The Secrets of Soil
Smithsonian Exhibit - Opening to the public on July 19, 2008
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Jory Soil Bill Bites the Dust!
If you have been wondering what happened to our efforts below, please read the Statesmen Journal article Statesman Journal - The jury's in, and Jory's out
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Jory Soil Bill Introduced!
House Joint Resolution "HJR 48" has been introduced and referred to the Committee on Agriculture in the Oregon State House of Representatives. It is being sponsored by Representatives Kevin Cameron (District 19) and Mitch Greenlick (District 33). The Jory Soil committee hearing will be held Tuesday, March 27th, 2007.
This is as close as we have gotten yet to getting Jory declared as our Oregon State Soil. What is a State Soil? A state soil is represented by a soil series that has special significance to a particular state. Each state in the United States has selected a state soil, fifteen of which have been legislatively established. These "Official State Soils" share the same level of distinction as official state flowers and birds. The importance of the Jory soil here in Oregon is highlighted by the success of the Vineyards and Wine and Christmas Tree Growing industries of our state. While Jory is one of many important and productive soils of Oregon, it represents so well the importance of soil in our lives, our economy and our recreational pursuits.
Thanks,
Will Austin - Past President Oregon Society of Soil Scientists
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2008 OSSS Officers and Staff
President: James Cassidy - james.cassidy@oregonstate.edu
Past President: Will Austin - will.austin@oregonstate.edu
Vice President: Daniel Moreno - daniel.moreno@oregonstate.edu
Secretary: Kurt Moffitt - kurt.moffitt@or.usda.gov
Treasurer: Ron Reuter - ron.reuter@oregonstate.edu
Westside Director: Steve Campbell - steve.campbell@or.usda.gov
Eastside Director: Jenni Moffitt - jennifer_moffitt@blm.gov
News Letter Editor: Ed Horn - ehorn@aaahawk.com
Membership Director: Will Austin - Contact Information Update
Publications Administrator: Tracy Mitzel -tracy.mitzel@oregonstate.edu
Sponsor This Site
In exchange for the free use of this ISP's computers, the OSSS must agree to allow sponsorship buttons on it's web pages. If you are interested in sponsoring this site in exchange for your soil's related advertising button placed on this page, contact us at osss@peak.org
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To learn more about soils, OSSS services, consultants, or membership, contact:
Oregon Society of Soil Scientists
P O. Box 2382
Corvallis, OR 97339
or send e-mail to the appropriate board member listed above under "2008 Officers".
Last updated August 18, 2008