Eight students are wiping the sweat from their foreheads, leaving streaks of dirt across their face. Covered head to toe in soil, these biogeochemistry students are digging two different three-foot holes in the woods behind the football field.

Microbiologist Preston Garcia and geochemist Andy Vermilyea teamed up to teach their students about biological, geological and chemical processes that make up the environment. In a semester-long experiment, these students will be testing the moisture in the soil by using lysimeters.

A lysimeter is a “collection device” used to collect moisture and rain water that has absorbed in the soil. Vermilyea made them out of PVC pipe.  The pipe has a mesh screen connected to a port that goes into a tube that will fit into a bottle and be buried in the ground.

“As the rain runs through this undisturbed soil, it will collect and drain through the tubes and down into the bottles in the hole,” Garica said. “Then they can take a syringe and hook it up to the tubing that comes out of the soil and draws up the liquid water.”

After the students completed digging the two holes, they dug three separate holes for the lysimeter to fit in the soil walls. 

“As we dug out the hole for the lysimeters, we took the same soil that we dug out of the hole to fill the lysimeters so that the soil was from the same horizon,” said environmental science major Mason Brown. “It’s important to not disturb the soil horizon because there’s different types of soil in each layer.” 

The two different three-foot holes the class dug out are quite a distance away from each other, allowing for the study of two different types of soil. They dug a lowland pit, which is closer to a stream, and a highland pit, which has more vegetation.

“The lowland group had an easier time digging because it gets flooded a lot. So the soil was easier to dig in, but the highland group had a very dry, rocky, full of roots spot, so they couldn’t dig their hole as deep because it was nearly impossible,” Garcia said with a chuckle.

So what will the class do once they gather all of this information?  They will be conducting tons of tests including measuring nutrients of the soil, how moist it is from top to bottom, the PH level, and what different textures are present. They will also be looking into what microorganisms are present.

“In the soil, you have all these organisms, which are feeding on things that are falling from the trees and controlling what the soil looks like, which influences what the ground water looks like,” Vermilyea said.

He was excited about one particular experiment students will be conducting with the soil they gathered.

“A really cool thing that they will be doing is creating bio-batteries out of dirt,” he said. “So some of the soil that they collected, they will put into a container and the microorganisms in the soil can be used to create electricity just from digging a hole and putting a wire down at the bottom and at the top, you can make a circuit and create a light flash and power a calculator.”

These two professors are trying to teach the students how to look outside the box at the information they are gathering and analyzing by collecting real world data.

“Getting people outside and in the field is really important for understanding science, like getting your hands dirty and feeling the science,” Vermilyea said.

“In this class we study a lot about super small processes that are super detailed, so we try and step back all the time and think about, ‘well what does this mean for a changing climate? Or how all these processes contribute to the health of our earth? So that’s what is kind of cool about this class.”

Eight students are wiping the sweat from their foreheads, leaving streaks of dirt across their face. Covered head to toe in soil, these biogeochemistry students are digging two different three-foot holes in the woods behind the football field.

Microbiologist Preston Garcia and geochemist Andy Vermilyea teamed up to teach their students about biological, geological and chemical processes that make up the environment. In a semester-long experiment, these students will be testing the moisture in the soil by using lysimeters.

A lysimeter is a “collection device” used to collect moisture and rain water that has absorbed in the soil. Vermilyea made them out of PVC pipe.  The pipe has a mesh screen connected to a port that goes into a tube that will fit into a bottle and be buried in the ground.

“As the rain runs through this undisturbed soil, it will collect and drain through the tubes and down into the bottles in the hole,” Garica said. “Then they can take a syringe and hook it up to the tubing that comes out of the soil and draws up the liquid water.”

After the students completed digging the two holes, they dug three separate holes for the lysimeter to fit in the soil walls. 

“As we dug out the hole for the lysimeters, we took the same soil that we dug out of the hole to fill the lysimeters so that the soil was from the same horizon,” said environmental science major Mason Brown. “It’s important to not disturb the soil horizon because there’s different types of soil in each layer.” 

The two different three-foot holes the class dug out are quite a distance away from each other, allowing for the study of two different types of soil. They dug a lowland pit, which is closer to a stream, and a highland pit, which has more vegetation.

“The lowland group had an easier time digging because it gets flooded a lot. So the soil was easier to dig in, but the highland group had a very dry, rocky, full of roots spot, so they couldn’t dig their hole as deep because it was nearly impossible,” Garcia said with a chuckle.

So what will the class do once they gather all of this information?  They will be conducting tons of tests including measuring nutrients of the soil, how moist it is from top to bottom, the PH level, and what different textures are present. They will also be looking into what microorganisms are present.

“In the soil, you have all these organisms, which are feeding on things that are falling from the trees and controlling what the soil looks like, which influences what the ground water looks like,” Vermilyea said.

He was excited about one particular experiment students will be conducting with the soil they gathered.

“A really cool thing that they will be doing is creating bio-batteries out of dirt,” he said. “So some of the soil that they collected, they will put into a container and the microorganisms in the soil can be used to create electricity just from digging a hole and putting a wire down at the bottom and at the top, you can make a circuit and create a light flash and power a calculator.”

These two professors are trying to teach the students how to look outside the box at the information they are gathering and analyzing by collecting real world data.

“Getting people outside and in the field is really important for understanding science, like getting your hands dirty and feeling the science,” Vermilyea said.

“In this class we study a lot about super small processes that are super detailed, so we try and step back all the time and think about, ‘well what does this mean for a changing climate? Or how all these processes contribute to the health of our earth? So that’s what is kind of cool about this class.”