Question

Suppose that you have just started a summer internship working for a cooperative extension service such as the Soil and Water Conservation Service. As part of your duties you will collect soil samples, conduct laboratory and field studies, and make recommendations on soil conservation and agriculture/sub-urban land use practices.
A) Identify and describe one chemical soil test and one physical soil test that could be performed and explain how the results of these tests could allow the SWCS to make specific recommendations for agriculture or land use?
B) Explain one advantage and one disadvantage.

Answer 1

Answer:

a) Physical soil test could be the humidity, chemical soil test could be the pH.

b) An advantage will be that both of them are easy and quickly to do. The disadvantage is that you need to buy the instruments to measure it.  

Explanation:

a) A physical measure is the one that can measure the water, temperature, structure of the soil, etc. is a characteristic that can show characteristics of the soil without changing it nature.

A Chemical measure will indicate some other requirements like pH, concentration of a nutrient, etc. This kind of measure can be modify is the crop need more nutrient or a different pH to grow.

b) Advantages and disadvantages will be different depending the studies to make. One advantage in all of them is that is easy to get and will give crops with high percentages to obtain harvest, avoid sickness, etc.

The great disadvantage is that in most of the measurements, is needed an instrument that has a cost and need some reactants some of them or calibration.

Hope this info is useful.