Naomi Levin and I had an excellent trip out to Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed (RCEW), which is a watershed with a long history of monitoring that is part of the newly established Drylands Critical Zone Network. Naomi and I visited to get an early start on our CZ17O project. We came to collect soil carbonates, soil water samples, set up a precipitation collector, and to connect with our new colleagues at Boise State University and at the USDA. It was so fun to nerd out with other scientists who also love soil carbonates. And oh boy, there were some spectacular soil carbonates to look at!
Crew of scientists enjoying a smoky day looking at soils at RCEW
Fortuitously, a trench had been excavated across some of the dirt roads in the watershed to block access for dust collection. For our purposes, this meant superb exposure of the soils.
Happy to see a trench exposing a calcic soil - this is what Naomi and I came here for!
We were also pleased that our plan to auger through gravelly desert soils to collect pristine soil waters actually worked.
BSU undergraduate Kyle operating the soil auger and Julia trying to keep up with sample labeling