First soil sampling site!
Soil corer and cooler containing sampling bags (plus our plant ID books)
A beautiful site (although we got rained out the first day of sampling.) Right between the beach and Lake Shore Drive, so I suppose only a beautiful view on one side, but still!
41st St Bioretention, Chicago Park District
You can see our transect tape running through the right side of the picture. This site is a pretty young restoration, which we could see by the clumping of the plant species which hadn’t had enough time to spread out. There were a whole bunch of Red-winged Blackbirds, who weren’t so happy that we were there but refrained from dive-bombing us. It was a small site and unfortunately had a lot of weeds, such as Medicago lupulina (Black Medick), a small clover with a little yellow flower.
My first soil samples were a success! Since this site was so close to the beach the layering in the soil is very clear in the corer. Cores are going to be 15 cm across all sites as a standard measurement.
Soil core from 41st St Bioretention
First soil sample!
And I found this little guy too! I keyed him out and he’s native from the midwest to the eastern United States.
Datana contracta (Contracted Datana)
