One
of the benefits of establishing an official state soil is the symbol becomes
a point of departure for learning and awareness on a host of natural resource
and environmental issues, including understanding "the soil"! The
Maine State Soil can serve as a focal point for the discussion of natural
resources with students, leading to important questions about environmental
quality, sustainability, and natural resource management in the 21st century.
As a result of the awareness that grew from the initial dialogues on establishing
a Maine State Soil in 1995, faculty at the University of Maine at Presque
Isle's Northern Maine Museum of Science developed an excellent exhibit
on the Maine State Soil highlighting characteristics of the Chesuncook
soil series, and using it as a tool to introduce basic concepts in soil
science. The photograph above shows the components of this wall panel
display in the museum.
You
will notice on the right hand side of the wall display there is a tall,
thin display component that we call a "soil monolith". Part of the
museum display includes a real soil "monolith" from the Chesuncook soil
series prepared by the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service.
A soil monolith is "A vertical section of a soil profile removed from the
soil and mounted for display and study"(1). One way to think about
it is if you dug a hole in this soil, jumped in the hole and faced a side
of the soil "pit", and extracted a slice of soil from top to bottom an
inch or so think but without disturbing the different layers of soil.
There are special techniques used to "freeze" the soil in place and preserve
it just as it was found in the field. This technique has been used
for nearly a century to create three dimensional representations of different
soil types evaluation and teaching purposes. If you visit the museum
it allows you peer inside the soil under foot without having to dig a hole!
At the museum they also have bronze plaques that describe different characteristics
of the soil. Countless students of all ages and members of the public
will enjoy this exhibit for many years to come.
