Jennifer Burman and Jonathan Hooper know a lot about the dirt in Southern Humboldt. They've been researching local dirt for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Soil Survey program for the past eight years. It's a hands-on process. They go out to the property of willing landowners with hand tools to dig six-foot-deep holes. They do this in a scientific manner, separating the dirt by levels and making extensive notes about the qualities of the dirt at each level.

The science of soil has come a long way since USDA scientist Guy Smith developed a new classification system for soil types in the late 1940s. Soil surveys then were mainly for use in ranching, farming and forestry. Now the uses of soil surveys have expanded to include a wider variety of activities requiring more refinement of the classifications. According to Hooper, the number of distinct types of soil has grown so much that the classifiers have run out of the more conventional names like Franciscan, Yager and Hugo. There are over 22 million different soil types in the world, Hooper said, and it's no longer possible for the discoverer to name it after him or herself. All the family names have been used, he said, and soil scientists are now required to be more creative

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in coming up with new names for the soil types they discover.

For instance, the soil on display at the soil survey workshop held at Beginnings on Tuesday, June 17, included Mad Turkey, Sproulish, Coolyork and Redwohly. The story behind Mad Turkey, collected from Seely Creek, is that when Burman went out to collect that sample, she was attacked by a turkey and had to be rescued by the landowner.

Each type of soil collected by Burman had its own box with separations for the soil material from the surface, which in some cases was duff, to the bottom depth of the bored hole. There is now an international registry of soil types and each new type has to be properly registered so that when the name is referenced, soil scientists all over the world know what is being referenced. Basically, soil science has a language all its own and all soil scientists speak the same language.

During the question and answer period that followed Burman's and Hooper's presentations, Hooper defined soil as a substance that supports plant life. Dunes and bedrock are not soil, but Redwohly is fractured rock that does support plant life, and a substance can't be bedrock if there is a plant growing in it.

Hooper said also that the average ph of soil here ranges from 5.5 to 6.2. The soil here gets leached by the heavy rains, but he said there are still abundant nutrients available and characterized local dirt as “pretty darn good.”

When asked about the application of the survey to erosion, Hooper said the survey would probably have a minimal impact. Our streams are full of sediment because roads have been built on slopes too steep for road building.

”Soil moves if it wants to,” Hooper said. “Even a 10% slope can slide in this climate.”

Burman said she found the soil she sampled in Seely Creek to have unique qualities that might be related to the time this area was under the ocean.

Burman has used the results of her work to create a map of soils in this area. Each type is referenced with a number and an accompanying description of its particular properties.

The result of the work being done by Burman and Hooper will be available online by the end of 2009, Hooper said. The survey results will be helpful to landowners who use it and Hooper suggested that anyone considering the purchase of piece of property should investigate the soil type before buying it to make sure that it will be a suitable for what they are planning. Soil surveys are used for building site development, road locations, productivity in terms of agriculture and suitability for sources of construction materials. Each identified soil type in this area comes with an extensive account of the properties of the soil and what its best and worst uses might be.

For more information about the Soil Survey Program, visit http://soils.usda.gov. A California soil survey is available at http://www.ca.nrcs.usda.gov/mira02/. Hooper warned everyone to be prepared for a slow and clunky navigation.

Both Hooper and Burman work out of the Arcata Soil Survey Office. They are located at 1125 16th St., Room 219 in Arcata. The phone number is 707-822-7090. The USDA office is located in Agricultural Center, 5630 South Broadway, Eureka. That phone number is 707-442-6058.