Associate professor published in soil survey region 12 newsletter

A study was carried out in Detroit, Michigan during the summer of 2015 to field test the effectiveness of pH, penetrability, electrical conductivity and magnetic susceptibility (referred to here as geophysical methods) for mapping urban soils. The study was funded by a grant from the U. S. Geological Survey's EDMAP program which has the goal of training the next generation in the art of geologic mapping.

NRCS soil scientists Joe Calus, Eric Gano, and Carla Ahlschwede from the Flint, Michigan MLRA Soil Survey Office provided technical advice to Dr. Jeffrey Howard and his five students from Wayne State University. Howard obtained a license from the Detroit Land Bank which granted temporary access to their approximately 50,000 pieces of property, many of which had abandoned and derelict buildings.

Mapping urban soils is generally complicated by the fact that they are often so artifact-rich that auger refusals occur 50 to 90 percent of the time. Geophysical methods were known from previous studies to provide a non-invasive alternative approach, but they had not yet been tested as a tool for mapping urban soils.

Read the rest of the story in the Glacial Gazette, March 2016 (PDF) publication (page three).