Soil Health Community Science Project

---

For several months now the ECO (Educating Children Outdoors) Teen  Naturalists have been collecting soil quality data at the Santa Cruz  River in Marana, Arizona. The teens are particularly interested in  learning how the invasive tamarisk affects the health of the soil and  water and if the reclaimed water has any negative effects on the soil.  We have been unable to find a community science project where we can  submit our data and compare our data to other sites, so we decided to  create our own thanks to Survey123. The questions on this form are ones  the teens came up with based on what they know about community science  and data collection. 

Please complete this form each time you visit your soil collection site so we can begin to compile a database of soil health data and raise awareness about why soil health is important to our ecosystems around the state of Arizona and eventually beyond (we will expand the project once we work out any kinks).

We realize that much of the information we are collecting is not the kind of high-level, precise data that could be used to write a scientific paper about soil health, especially since the quality of the tools participants will be using will vary. The overall purpose of this community science initiative is to get youth outdoors to collect data, become more interested in soil health, and make observations about the ecosystem and what factors could be affecting the health of the soil.

*Some of the questions require collecting a soil sample to perform additional tests which may take 24-48 hrs (soil texture and nutrients testing). So you may wish to take notes at your collection site and submit your form once your other tests are completed.

There are a couple ways to the view the data we have collected from surveys....

To  view the data we have collected through our soil health survey click below.

To  analyze the data we have collected through our soil health survey click below.