Illinois landowners could be eligible for $5,000 in free soil analyses and consultation with a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign research team in exchange for participating in a historic project seeking to learn how soils have changed over 120 years.
- Lauren Quinn
The project started when soil scientist Andrew Margenot stumbled upon a trove of ancient soil samples - some dating back to the late 1800s - in a university barn slated for demolition. Likely the oldest and largest soil archive in the world, the 8,000-sample collection was ripe for analysis.
After finalizing the digitization of the soil archive a year ago, Margenot, with funding support from the Illinois Nutrient Research and Education Council (NREC) and Illinois Farm Bureau, implored current landowners to let his team re-sample the 453 original locations. So far, the U. of I. team has only been able to access 8% of the sites.
