Soil Judging is the best way for students to develop field skills in soil science. Through soil judging, students get to see, describe, and interpret soils across the country, network with soils students and professors, and truly comprehend the importance of soils.
General soil judging information
I've been involved with soil judging for over 12 years, as an undergraduate judger, graduate student assistant coach, and as a head coach. Within soil judging there are many rules, traditions, and tricks that are not always written anywhere and create a huge disadvantage for new coaches, and especially new coaches who are not trained pedologists. Whenever I come across these, I try to address them here to prevent soil judging gatekeeping!
I've been involved with soil judging for over 12 years, as an undergraduate judger, graduate student assistant coach, and as a head coach. Within soil judging there are many rules, traditions, and tricks that are not always written anywhere and create a huge disadvantage for new coaches, and especially new coaches who are not trained pedologists. Whenever I come across these, I try to address them here to prevent soil judging gatekeeping!
The big question: how do I get more information about soil judging if I want to get involved or start a team?
There is a central website for collegiate soil judging (https://www.agronomy.org/undergrads/contests/soils-contests) but it is not updated very often. Some regions have a dedicated website and some do not. Soil judging usually involves a regional competition in the fall where any college in that region may attend:
- Region 1: Connecticut , Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey Rhode Island ,Maryland, New York, Vermont
- Region 2: Alabama North Carolina Tennessee , Florida, Puerto Rico, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky
- Region 3: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin
- Region 4: Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma
- Region 5: Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota
- Region 6: Alaska, California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii, New Mexico
- Region 7: Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Montana
If you are located in the NE region, feel free to reach out to me for more information! Otherwise, your best bet is to find a coach in your region and contact them - look for a school’s soil judging website or maybe a news article that lists the coach’s name. They should be able to tell you who is hosting that year and how to get in touch with that person. I know this is a complicated way to get information, but hopefully once you are on the email list you will stay on the email list.
If your team places in the top half of team at the regional contest, you qualify to attend the national contest (some regions allow the hosts to automatically qualify as an incentive for hosting).
One other potential point of confusion: NACTA hosts a soils competition during their judging conference every spring (https://nactateachers.org/page/judgingconference). Their website tends to be better, and they have both 2- and 4-year divisions. Some coaches prefer NACTA contests, and others go to NACTA when they do not qualify for the collegiate soil judging contest. For simplicity’s sake (and because I have never been to NACTA) when I refer to a soil judging contest I am always referring to the ASA-SSSA collegiate one unless I specify that it is NACTA.
What do I need to start a team?
You will need some equipment and funds, and a minimum of 3 students. Usually the soil judging manuals list the equipment needed per student (color book, knife, slope shooter, water bottle, etc). There are free resources are available from the NRCS at https://nrcspad.sc.egov.usda.gov/DistributionCenter/ The Field Book for Describing and Sampling Soils ver. 3.0 and Keys to Soil Taxonomy 13th edition are the most useful soil judging.
Some regions use the same manual/guidebook and scorecard every year so it is relatively easy to jump into a contest. Other regions, like the NE use a different scorecard and manual every fall. These are distributed via email sometimes well into the fall semester. The teams in those regions usually have old scorecards and manuals (perhaps even from the last time that school hosted the contest) that they will use to practice until the official ones are sent. New schools are kind of left hanging - ask the host to send you old copies and hopefully they will be willing.
You should know that you will be at a huge disadvantage for the first few years until you get the hang of the rules (both written and unwritten). When I moved to Delval there was already a team, an adjunct who had been coaching for years, and plenty of institutional knowledge. I even knew a lot of the other coaches and teams because I judged in the NE as an undergraduate and as an assistant coach for two years. AND I had been coaching for 5 years previously in the SE region. Even with all of that help in place, it was still very difficult to adjust to the rules and norms of the NE. If I hadn’t had the adjunct as my co-coach I would have been pretty lost.
Some things to know and/or ask about:
- You cannot have a Bw horizon and a Bt horizon in the same profile (there are a few weird instances where you might have both, such as
- Most diagnostic horizons (e.g. cambic, argillic) have requirements beyond just describing a Bw or Bt horizon. For instance, the cambic horizon has a texture and depth requirement, among others. Every region/host seems to have their own way of handling this, so make sure to ask if you’re following Soil Taxonomy to a T or if there are abbreviated rules for the contest.
- For Cr and R horizons you usually only describe the horizon names and depth and not the morphology (dash the rest of the boxes). Each region does it differently though, so make sure to check.
- Always ask how you should be coloring the A horizons – some regions do broken ped faces, some do crushed peds, and some you can just color your texture ball.
How do I practice with my team?
Field practices are the best way for students to learn how to fill out the scorecard. Getting students to show up to these is challenging when starting a team (or even when most of your team graduates and you must start fresh). I constantly remind the students that we won’t have any more practices after the contest, and try to incentivize attending with snacks and stickers and whatever I can think of. This is where bigger universities tend to have an advantage, because they have years of institutional knowledge about practice pit and digging locations that they can visit. They may even have texture samples from the last time the school hosted.
Another way to learn the scorecard is to give the students the morphology information and have them fill out the rest of the card. Find a soil series that is mapped where the contest will be and fill out the morphology boxes. You will also need to give them a slope %, some landscape information (I usually give them drawing of a hillslope and pit an X where the profile is located), and probably some data (carbon, base sat, etc). Sometimes I make them fill out the horizon names based on the morphology and sometimes I give it to them. Ask the students to fill out the rest of the scorecard and show their work for any calculations. Another method is to fill out the whole scorecard for them but leave some mistakes and ask them to find those mistakes. For example, the soil structure has an abbreviation that is ambiguous, available water is calculated incorrectly, etc. Sometimes the students like that way better because I always end up making more mistakes than I meant to.
Set up texture quizzes – I give my students 10 samples and ask them to identify the texture class, % clay, and % sand. I grade their answers, then they go back and keep texturing the same samples until they get 100% correct.
There are some other activities that I have come up with over the years in the Soil Judging Resources page. If you have any you would like to share, please email me!