I fuckin love this chart, had to use this when doing civil engineering.
Given the makeup of dirt around where I am, I feel like I can't in earnest claim to be anything other than Clay
Oh hey I remember this guy from geology 101, fun class to take when living on a major fault line a couple years after a big earthquake. Felt super relevant.
Kinda. Knowing soil comp can explain the different liquefaction when mama Terra starts twerking.
Edit: severity of liquefaction I mean
I know that this graph makes perfect sense for something like this, but it still hurts my brain to pick any point and calculate percentages based on the gridlines
There should be a little compass-thingy to show you which three of the six lines radiating out of each point you're supposed to follow.
If you follow all six of them you end up with 300%.
ok but why are those specific regions assigned as they are
why is it just clay if it's above like 60% but you can only call something sand if it's 100% fucking sand
It might have to do with what lives in it or how the mix affects the soil's material properties like water retention.
Sandy Loam: who is she? What does she want? Why is she hidden so deep?
How do you read a chart like this? It hurts my eyes.
Is it just, you find whatever percents of stuff a dirt is as two points on a triangle, and then the third vertex tells you what species of dirt it is?
Edit: wait I think I got it. Still looks like something out of the necronomicon though
The arrow that says 'Percent X' tells you which way the line goes for that soil component. So silt is Down-left, Sand is up-right, and Clay is Right-across. You can find the percentage of components at a point by going radially outward in the opposite directions i.e. find silt by going along the up-right line and seeing where it hits the axis.
You can find what type of soil you have from percentages by highlighting the lines for each percentage and then finding their intersection. Eventually (god help you if you can!) you will get comfortable with this behemoth and can figure it out by looking.
I like the way you judge this. Put a soil sample in water with some sodium hexametaphosphate and the sand will immediately sink. In a couple hours you'll have your silt layer above it. A day later the tiny clay particles will have settled. Tally up the percentages, BAM you know what to add to your soil for better structure.
Am I reading this wrong?? Hey, you see this Loam? Let's remove some of the sand.
Okay now the Loam has become Sandy Loam by removing sand from it.
