August 7, 2025 • 16 mins
Soil is more than just what we see on the surface, on average consisting of 45% mineral components, 5% organic matter, 25% water, and 25% air, with bulk density measuring how much dry soil weighs per volume.
• Bulk density indicates the space available in soil for air and water
• Sandy soils counterintuitively have higher bulk density than clay soils
• Clay soils typically contain more organic matter which contributes to greater pore spaces
• Bulk density increases as you go deeper into the soil profile
• Tillage initially reduces bulk density but destroys aggregate structure
• No-till transitions require time for new aggregate formation
• Compacted soils with high bulk density limit root exploration
• The ideal soil provides adequate pore space for root growth
• Calculating total nutrients requires understanding soil bulk density
More on measuring bulk density and bulk density as a soil health indicator: https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2023-01/Soil%20Quality-Indicators-Bulk%20Density.pdf
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sarah (00:00):
And now it's time for a Tiny Byte of knowledge.
Jodi (00:13):
Sarah, I've got a couple of questions for you, a couple
of serious questions for you.
Sarah (00:17):
That's good.
I'm a serious person most ofthe time.
Jodi (00:20):
Have you ever thought about what actually makes up a
soil?
Sarah (00:24):
Absolutely.
I think about soil all the timebecause it's fun to think about
soil.
Jodi (00:31):
That's what I kind of figured.
I kind of figured you mightthink it'd be fun to think about
soil.
I'm glad I came here for this.
Sarah (00:39):
Absolutely.
So let's just talk for a secondabout what is in a soil, right?
So a soil, by and far and away,is 45% mineral component.
That's the component that allof us as human beings think
about all the time 5% organicmatter, 25% water and 25% air.
(00:59):
Now these things can kind ofchange a little bit, right?
I mean, it depends upon whereyou're.
Where you're at, what's goingon.
But you know, for example, ifyou're in a drought condition,
you're going to end up with alot more air in your soil than
water.
If you're in a saturatedsituation, you probably don't
have much air in your soil.
If you're in a peat bog, forexample, you probably have more
(01:22):
than just 5% organic matter outthere.
So these things can change.
But on a whole, when we'rethinking about, like what a
quote unquote normal or idealsoil has, it's that 45% mineral,
5% organic matter, 25% air and25% water.
Jodi (01:42):
One way and one term you might hear that kind of covers
this concept of like how muchthe whole soil itself, these
four components of soil themineral component, the organic
matter component and then alsothe air and water.
One term that you'll hear thatmeasures this is the bulk
density of the soil, and so whatthat includes is just how much
(02:04):
that dry soil itself weighs perthe volume of it.
And it might sound like it's areally easy measurement and it
kind of is right, like once yousubmit a bulk density sample to
a lab, it's very easy for themto dry that down and measure the
weight of it.
However, this is where thingskind of get complicated and it
comes back into what we'retrying to get at and what we're
(02:26):
trying to measure with bulkdensity.
Many of you have probably heardabout bulk density in the
context of trying to reduce yourbulk density, trying to make
your soil less dense, becauseoften we think about compaction
when we talk about bulk density.
Because when you think about it, what happens is, say, if
you're just like a garden soilor maybe a part of a field
(02:47):
that's really wet, when you puta tire over that and you
compress that soil when it'sreally wet.
What happens is you kind ofsquish all of that air and that
water out to the side and youget a really dense soil right
and without a lot of shrinkingand swelling activity, that
might stay dense for a long time.
Sarah (03:07):
And when you're talking about a dense soil you mean
there's not a lot of space inthere for air or water to be
correct In other words, all ofthe soil particles are compacted
together and now there's nolonger room for that water and
air.
Jodi (03:22):
Yeah, so, like when you think about it, like you're not
just 45% mineral, you'reprobably closer to like 70%
mineral, same amount of organicmatter and then a lot less pore
space.
And so that's often what wethink about when we think about
this term of bulk density.
It doesn't take a normal soilprobe to measure bulk density.
(03:51):
It's going to take somethingthat you can get a wide area of
the soil to measure with, andthen the best way is to take
like a big old cylinder and thenslowly tap the top of it with
like a slide hammer so thatyou're not compressing the soil
itself as you're putting thatprobe into the ground to collect
that bulk density sample.
Because, again, like, whatwe're trying to get at is, as
the soil sits in the ground, howdense is it, how much of the
(04:15):
area of the soil is made up bythe pore spaces of the soil.
And if we're going to take atiny soil probe and press it
into the ground, we're going tocompress a lot of that and we're
going to increase the bulkdensity of it if we're just
using, you know, like a regularone inch, like wide hand probe
to do that.
Sarah (04:35):
So I love this conversation because actually
taking bulk density measurementsand the reality of the sense is
actually one of the mostdifficult measurements that you
can actually perform as a soilsperson because of what, quite
frankly, a pain in the butt itis to actually pound that
(04:55):
cylinder into the ground.
But I'm going to back up for asecond and I'm just going to
read the textbook definition ofbulk density Is defined as the
mass of a unit volume of drysoil.
In other words, you have a knownvolume, that cylinder that Jodi
was just talking about poundinginto the ground.
(05:17):
So we know the volume of thatcylinder and we're going to take
, we're going to pound that intothe ground, pull that out
carefully, get all the soil outof that cylinder.
We're going to weigh it beforewe dry it.
Dry it for 24 hours at 105degrees Celsius, pull it back
out and weigh it again.
(05:37):
Take those differences anddivide that by the volume so
that we get that known bulkdensity.
So that is going to help usunderstand the amount of solids,
dry solids, that are in in thatsoil over the rest of the space
of that soil which could betaken up either by water or air.
And again, just like Jodi wastalking about, roots don't grow
(06:04):
through concrete and compactedareas very well.
We want to have enough porespace and enough air and water
so that the roots can reallyexplore that soil.
That's when we have really goodcrop growth happening.
Jodi (06:22):
Yeah, it's so funny because talking about bulk
density, it's kind of like anesoteric concept, right, like
this bulk density.
Whoa, whoa, how fancy is bulkdensity.
But what it comes down to islike is there?
Sarah (06:33):
space in the soil.
Pretty fancy, if you ask me.
It's really fancy, just likeyou and me, jodi, oui, oui, oh
my god.
Jodi (06:42):
But like, what it comes down to is like is there room in
the soil for there to be airfor the roots to absorb?
Is there room in the soil forwater to be stored?
Those are really reallyimportant things, and so there
are a couple things that canimpact bulk density beyond, like
whether or not it's beingsquished.
So like, here's some things tothink about, like when the
(07:02):
typical bulk density numbersthat you're going to see are
probably going to be somethingaround like 1.3.
That's like the textbook mediumtextured soil with about 50%
poor space that's filled withwater and soil, or water and air
, excuse me.
So 1.33 is a quote unquotestandard, but like there isn't
really a standard, like this isall going to come back to what
(07:25):
the texture of your soil is.
Typically, sandy soils aregoing to be more dense because
those sands compress and theydon't let a whole lot of air in,
and that soundscounterintuitive.
You might think, oh well, I'vegot a really light soil, a light
sandy soil.
That doesn't mean that it.
What does it actually mean?
(07:46):
Right?
Sarah (07:47):
How heavy is a clay?
But how heavy is a clay?
I have been around some Fargoclays for my entire life and the
farmers routinely refer to themas heavy clays.
How much do those claysactually weigh?
It's a big joke in the soilscience world in my opinion.
But, jodi, you bring up a reallygood point when we start
(08:09):
thinking about sands versusclays.
One of the things that's reallyimportant in a soil is that
organic matter component becausethat helps the soil particles,
the clay particles, sticktogether when we've got organic
matter in there, and sandsgenerally tend to have less
organic matter in them.
So if you've got a sand that'sgot not a lot of organic matter,
(08:33):
yeah, it's going to compact ontop of each other and roots are
going to have a more challengingtime exploring that than a clay
that is well aggregated with alot of pore space in it.
So those are some things thatare interesting to think about
and when we think about soilcrusting.
So one of the issues that I'veworked with with farmers is when
(08:55):
crops emerge in soil crusting.
Okay, my background is I'vescouted a few sugar beets in my
day and when we get crusting insugar beets there's little tiny
cotyledons that need to get outof the ground.
Well, it would always seem thatwhen we would go to the sands,
when we'd have those crustingissues, it would kind of seal up
solid and there was neverreally enough if the sun would
(09:20):
bake that sand.
There was never really enoughorganic matter in there to allow
that the aggregates to kind ofstick together.
The solids just kind of stayedthere layered together and would
seal up tight, whereas in theclays, a lot of times those
aggregates, when they start todry out, the aggregates are
(09:41):
getting stuck together becauseof the organic matter and they
kind of crack up.
And then all of a sudden you'llsee, you know a big, huge,
thick piece of crust but it'sbroken and the cotyledons, the
plants, can actually push theirway through where on the sands
you can't do that and it'sprobably time to go get the
rotary hole.
Jodi (10:01):
But but thinking about this right, so like.
Okay, the point is is like,even though you might think of
like clays as being heavy,counterintuitively these clay
soils, they've got higheramounts of organic matter and
they typically have more porespace than sands.
Sands just can't stick together, or like they don't stick
(10:22):
together very well.
They kind of just fall andcompress on top of each other,
which leads to what Sarahmentioned, the soil crusting.
But it also means that theytypically sands have typically a
higher bulk density, eventhough you know we refer to them
as being a quote unquotelighter soil, and then clays, on
the other hand, typically havelower bulk densities.
So again, the point I want tomake here is that there are some
(10:44):
things that do affect bulkdensity beyond trafficking or
driving across something.
There are these other factorsthat also affect that bulk
density as well.
Same thing, like if you thinkabout a soil horizon and let's
all remember that soil isn'tjust what we see on the surface,
there's soil also below it, allthe way down to the parent
(11:04):
material of that soil.
And typically, as we go fartherdown that soil profile, we're
going to have higher bulkdensities as we go farther down.
That comes down to A again,like Sarah mentioned in her
story, when there's organicmatter that helps create pores,
and when we get farther downfrom the surface, there's less
(11:24):
organic matter.
That's just there, and sothere's just less pore space
because of that.
So that increases the bulkdensity.
And then, of course, as youthink about it right, if an acre
furrow slice, a six inch acrefurrow slice of soil, is 2
million pounds, that's a lot ofweight that's compressed in
these other layers too, and soas you go farther down in a soil
profile, your bulk density isgoing to increase.
(11:45):
And so the reason we think aboutthis is because if we're
starting to think about thesereally big like landscape
measurements, if you're tryingto figure out anything total
wise of a soil or like how muchphosphorus is in a six acre
furrow slice, one of thosethings that you have to consider
and I'm not talking just likesoil testing and figuring out
(12:08):
what your soil test phosphoruslevel is I'm thinking about like
if you were to ask the questionhow much total phosphorus is
there in 12 inches of soil?
One of the base questionsyou're going to have to find the
answer to is what is the bulkdensity of that whole 12 inch
profile.
If the bulk density is 2.65,which is extremely dense that is
(12:30):
typically what we think of asbeing like the bulk density of a
rock You're going to have a waydifferent answer than of the
amount of phosphorus that'sthere, versus if you were
working with a 1.33 bulk densitysoil.
Sarah (12:43):
I also think it's important to think about some of
the human interactions withbulk density and some of the
things that can happen.
So when we do tillage in soils,one of the things that happens
okay, so initially when you dothat tillage pass, you're going
to introduce more air into thatsystem but one of the things
(13:03):
that also happens is that soilstructure, that aggregation, is
destroyed, and so then when youend up having rain again, you
kind of compact.
Those aggregates are no longerthere for the stability and the
soil particles stack up on topof each other.
That generally tends toincrease the bulk density of a
(13:26):
soil, and so that is why wethink about heavy tillage
systems having maybe a littlebit more issue with compaction
than areas where no-till doesn'thappen.
Also, if you're transitioninginto no-till, that's one of the
reasons why you go through thatyucky stage like a couple of
years in, where you probablyhave that bit of reduced growth.
(13:50):
That's because you you're nolonger tilling your soil and and
now we have to kind of workthrough that process of getting
those aggregates developed againin the absence of that tillage,
because you know again you'vedestroyed the aggregation with
your tillage and now you need tolet those aggregates form and
let the organic matter, letthose aggregates stick together
(14:14):
again.
Jodi (14:15):
Yeah.
So I think the big takeaway inall this even though the whole
point of this was to discussbulk density and define it I
think the biggest takeaway hereis that the soil isn't just what
we see in terms of the black orbrown stuff sitting on the
surface.
It's also about the pore space.
It's about how much air andwater is able to move through
(14:36):
our soil, and that's a reallyimportant consideration.
We can't neglect the otherfractions of this living thing
that is our soil.
Sarah (14:45):
We cannot forget about the importance of the air and
the water and the organic matterthat goes along with the
mineral component.
Wow, Jodi, this is a reallydense topic.
Jodi (14:58):
It really was.
Sarah (14:59):
It was very, in the words of us in the East, a very heavy
topic very heavy soil, but animportant one, and I certainly
hope that the bulk densities outthere in the soils are bulk
densities that allow for greatplant root exploration and plant
growth Tune in next time for atiny bite of knowledge from GK
(15:24):
Technology, where we have a mapand an app for that.
And now it's time for a Tiny Byte of knowledge.
Jodi (00:13):
Sarah, I've got a couple of questions for you, a couple
of serious questions for you.
Sarah (00:17):
That's good.
I'm a serious person most ofthe time.
Jodi (00:20):
Have you ever thought about what actually makes up a
soil?
Sarah (00:24):
Absolutely.
I think about soil all the timebecause it's fun to think about
soil.
Jodi (00:31):
That's what I kind of figured.
I kind of figured you mightthink it'd be fun to think about
soil.
I'm glad I came here for this.
Sarah (00:39):
Absolutely.
So let's just talk for a secondabout what is in a soil, right?
So a soil, by and far and away,is 45% mineral component.
That's the component that allof us as human beings think
about all the time 5% organicmatter, 25% water and 25% air.
(00:59):
Now these things can kind ofchange a little bit, right?
I mean, it depends upon whereyou're.
Where you're at, what's goingon.
But you know, for example, ifyou're in a drought condition,
you're going to end up with alot more air in your soil than
water.
If you're in a saturatedsituation, you probably don't
have much air in your soil.
If you're in a peat bog, forexample, you probably have more
(01:22):
than just 5% organic matter outthere.
So these things can change.
But on a whole, when we'rethinking about, like what a
quote unquote normal or idealsoil has, it's that 45% mineral,
5% organic matter, 25% air and25% water.
Jodi (01:42):
One way and one term you might hear that kind of covers
this concept of like how muchthe whole soil itself, these
four components of soil themineral component, the organic
matter component and then alsothe air and water.
One term that you'll hear thatmeasures this is the bulk
density of the soil, and so whatthat includes is just how much
(02:04):
that dry soil itself weighs perthe volume of it.
And it might sound like it's areally easy measurement and it
kind of is right, like once yousubmit a bulk density sample to
a lab, it's very easy for themto dry that down and measure the
weight of it.
However, this is where thingskind of get complicated and it
comes back into what we'retrying to get at and what we're
(02:26):
trying to measure with bulkdensity.
Many of you have probably heardabout bulk density in the
context of trying to reduce yourbulk density, trying to make
your soil less dense, becauseoften we think about compaction
when we talk about bulk density.
Because when you think about it, what happens is, say, if
you're just like a garden soilor maybe a part of a field
(02:47):
that's really wet, when you puta tire over that and you
compress that soil when it'sreally wet.
What happens is you kind ofsquish all of that air and that
water out to the side and youget a really dense soil right
and without a lot of shrinkingand swelling activity, that
might stay dense for a long time.
Sarah (03:07):
And when you're talking about a dense soil you mean
there's not a lot of space inthere for air or water to be
correct In other words, all ofthe soil particles are compacted
together and now there's nolonger room for that water and
air.
Jodi (03:22):
Yeah, so, like when you think about it, like you're not
just 45% mineral, you'reprobably closer to like 70%
mineral, same amount of organicmatter and then a lot less pore
space.
And so that's often what wethink about when we think about
this term of bulk density.
It doesn't take a normal soilprobe to measure bulk density.
(03:51):
It's going to take somethingthat you can get a wide area of
the soil to measure with, andthen the best way is to take
like a big old cylinder and thenslowly tap the top of it with
like a slide hammer so thatyou're not compressing the soil
itself as you're putting thatprobe into the ground to collect
that bulk density sample.
Because, again, like, whatwe're trying to get at is, as
the soil sits in the ground, howdense is it, how much of the
(04:15):
area of the soil is made up bythe pore spaces of the soil.
And if we're going to take atiny soil probe and press it
into the ground, we're going tocompress a lot of that and we're
going to increase the bulkdensity of it if we're just
using, you know, like a regularone inch, like wide hand probe
to do that.
Sarah (04:35):
So I love this conversation because actually
taking bulk density measurementsand the reality of the sense is
actually one of the mostdifficult measurements that you
can actually perform as a soilsperson because of what, quite
frankly, a pain in the butt itis to actually pound that
(04:55):
cylinder into the ground.
But I'm going to back up for asecond and I'm just going to
read the textbook definition ofbulk density Is defined as the
mass of a unit volume of drysoil.
In other words, you have a knownvolume, that cylinder that Jodi
was just talking about poundinginto the ground.
(05:17):
So we know the volume of thatcylinder and we're going to take
, we're going to pound that intothe ground, pull that out
carefully, get all the soil outof that cylinder.
We're going to weigh it beforewe dry it.
Dry it for 24 hours at 105degrees Celsius, pull it back
out and weigh it again.
(05:37):
Take those differences anddivide that by the volume so
that we get that known bulkdensity.
So that is going to help usunderstand the amount of solids,
dry solids, that are in in thatsoil over the rest of the space
of that soil which could betaken up either by water or air.
And again, just like Jodi wastalking about, roots don't grow
(06:04):
through concrete and compactedareas very well.
We want to have enough porespace and enough air and water
so that the roots can reallyexplore that soil.
That's when we have really goodcrop growth happening.
Jodi (06:22):
Yeah, it's so funny because talking about bulk
density, it's kind of like anesoteric concept, right, like
this bulk density.
Whoa, whoa, how fancy is bulkdensity.
But what it comes down to islike is there?
Sarah (06:33):
space in the soil.
Pretty fancy, if you ask me.
It's really fancy, just likeyou and me, jodi, oui, oui, oh
my god.
Jodi (06:42):
But like, what it comes down to is like is there room in
the soil for there to be airfor the roots to absorb?
Is there room in the soil forwater to be stored?
Those are really reallyimportant things, and so there
are a couple things that canimpact bulk density beyond, like
whether or not it's beingsquished.
So like, here's some things tothink about, like when the
(07:02):
typical bulk density numbersthat you're going to see are
probably going to be somethingaround like 1.3.
That's like the textbook mediumtextured soil with about 50%
poor space that's filled withwater and soil, or water and air
, excuse me.
So 1.33 is a quote unquotestandard, but like there isn't
really a standard, like this isall going to come back to what
(07:25):
the texture of your soil is.
Typically, sandy soils aregoing to be more dense because
those sands compress and theydon't let a whole lot of air in,
and that soundscounterintuitive.
You might think, oh well, I'vegot a really light soil, a light
sandy soil.
That doesn't mean that it.
What does it actually mean?
(07:46):
Right?
Sarah (07:47):
How heavy is a clay?
But how heavy is a clay?
I have been around some Fargoclays for my entire life and the
farmers routinely refer to themas heavy clays.
How much do those claysactually weigh?
It's a big joke in the soilscience world in my opinion.
But, jodi, you bring up a reallygood point when we start
(08:09):
thinking about sands versusclays.
One of the things that's reallyimportant in a soil is that
organic matter component becausethat helps the soil particles,
the clay particles, sticktogether when we've got organic
matter in there, and sandsgenerally tend to have less
organic matter in them.
So if you've got a sand that'sgot not a lot of organic matter,
(08:33):
yeah, it's going to compact ontop of each other and roots are
going to have a more challengingtime exploring that than a clay
that is well aggregated with alot of pore space in it.
So those are some things thatare interesting to think about
and when we think about soilcrusting.
So one of the issues that I'veworked with with farmers is when
(08:55):
crops emerge in soil crusting.
Okay, my background is I'vescouted a few sugar beets in my
day and when we get crusting insugar beets there's little tiny
cotyledons that need to get outof the ground.
Well, it would always seem thatwhen we would go to the sands,
when we'd have those crustingissues, it would kind of seal up
solid and there was neverreally enough if the sun would
(09:20):
bake that sand.
There was never really enoughorganic matter in there to allow
that the aggregates to kind ofstick together.
The solids just kind of stayedthere layered together and would
seal up tight, whereas in theclays, a lot of times those
aggregates, when they start todry out, the aggregates are
(09:41):
getting stuck together becauseof the organic matter and they
kind of crack up.
And then all of a sudden you'llsee, you know a big, huge,
thick piece of crust but it'sbroken and the cotyledons, the
plants, can actually push theirway through where on the sands
you can't do that and it'sprobably time to go get the
rotary hole.
Jodi (10:01):
But but thinking about this right, so like.
Okay, the point is is like,even though you might think of
like clays as being heavy,counterintuitively these clay
soils, they've got higheramounts of organic matter and
they typically have more porespace than sands.
Sands just can't stick together, or like they don't stick
(10:22):
together very well.
They kind of just fall andcompress on top of each other,
which leads to what Sarahmentioned, the soil crusting.
But it also means that theytypically sands have typically a
higher bulk density, eventhough you know we refer to them
as being a quote unquotelighter soil, and then clays, on
the other hand, typically havelower bulk densities.
So again, the point I want tomake here is that there are some
(10:44):
things that do affect bulkdensity beyond trafficking or
driving across something.
There are these other factorsthat also affect that bulk
density as well.
Same thing, like if you thinkabout a soil horizon and let's
all remember that soil isn'tjust what we see on the surface,
there's soil also below it, allthe way down to the parent
(11:04):
material of that soil.
And typically, as we go fartherdown that soil profile, we're
going to have higher bulkdensities as we go farther down.
That comes down to A again,like Sarah mentioned in her
story, when there's organicmatter that helps create pores,
and when we get farther downfrom the surface, there's less
(11:24):
organic matter.
That's just there, and sothere's just less pore space
because of that.
So that increases the bulkdensity.
And then, of course, as youthink about it right, if an acre
furrow slice, a six inch acrefurrow slice of soil, is 2
million pounds, that's a lot ofweight that's compressed in
these other layers too, and soas you go farther down in a soil
profile, your bulk density isgoing to increase.
(11:45):
And so the reason we think aboutthis is because if we're
starting to think about thesereally big like landscape
measurements, if you're tryingto figure out anything total
wise of a soil or like how muchphosphorus is in a six acre
furrow slice, one of thosethings that you have to consider
and I'm not talking just likesoil testing and figuring out
(12:08):
what your soil test phosphoruslevel is I'm thinking about like
if you were to ask the questionhow much total phosphorus is
there in 12 inches of soil?
One of the base questionsyou're going to have to find the
answer to is what is the bulkdensity of that whole 12 inch
profile.
If the bulk density is 2.65,which is extremely dense that is
(12:30):
typically what we think of asbeing like the bulk density of a
rock You're going to have a waydifferent answer than of the
amount of phosphorus that'sthere, versus if you were
working with a 1.33 bulk densitysoil.
Sarah (12:43):
I also think it's important to think about some of
the human interactions withbulk density and some of the
things that can happen.
So when we do tillage in soils,one of the things that happens
okay, so initially when you dothat tillage pass, you're going
to introduce more air into thatsystem but one of the things
(13:03):
that also happens is that soilstructure, that aggregation, is
destroyed, and so then when youend up having rain again, you
kind of compact.
Those aggregates are no longerthere for the stability and the
soil particles stack up on topof each other.
That generally tends toincrease the bulk density of a
(13:26):
soil, and so that is why wethink about heavy tillage
systems having maybe a littlebit more issue with compaction
than areas where no-till doesn'thappen.
Also, if you're transitioninginto no-till, that's one of the
reasons why you go through thatyucky stage like a couple of
years in, where you probablyhave that bit of reduced growth.
(13:50):
That's because you you're nolonger tilling your soil and and
now we have to kind of workthrough that process of getting
those aggregates developed againin the absence of that tillage,
because you know again you'vedestroyed the aggregation with
your tillage and now you need tolet those aggregates form and
let the organic matter, letthose aggregates stick together
(14:14):
again.
Jodi (14:15):
Yeah.
So I think the big takeaway inall this even though the whole
point of this was to discussbulk density and define it I
think the biggest takeaway hereis that the soil isn't just what
we see in terms of the black orbrown stuff sitting on the
surface.
It's also about the pore space.
It's about how much air andwater is able to move through
(14:36):
our soil, and that's a reallyimportant consideration.
We can't neglect the otherfractions of this living thing
that is our soil.
Sarah (14:45):
We cannot forget about the importance of the air and
the water and the organic matterthat goes along with the
mineral component.
Wow, Jodi, this is a reallydense topic.
Jodi (14:58):
It really was.
Sarah (14:59):
It was very, in the words of us in the East, a very heavy
topic very heavy soil, but animportant one, and I certainly
hope that the bulk densities outthere in the soils are bulk
densities that allow for greatplant root exploration and plant
growth Tune in next time for atiny bite of knowledge from GK
(15:24):
Technology, where we have a mapand an app for that.
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