Soil Ecosystem Analytical Techniques

Catalog description

SOILS 804 is a three-credit quantitative laboratory instrumentation course that is designed to give students a deeper understanding and application of modern laboratory instrumental techniques for the isolation, identification, detection, and quantitation of soil ecosystem chemical substances. Upon completion of the course, students should be well versed in appropriate techniques used to collect and process a sample and measure the chemical constituents and assess the condition of soil ecosystems: soil gases; soil inorganic and organic solids, and soil solutions/digests/extracts. Instrumental techniques covered in the course include spectroscopic, chromatographic, spectrometric, electrochemical, and thermal methods for soil ecosystem measurements. As such, the course has laboratory and lecture components. In the lectures, students learn good laboratory practices, sampling and sample processing and preparation methods, selection of analytical instruments and the chemical and/or physical principles exploited during the measurement, how the instrument performs the measurement and some of the techniques used to increase accuracy, precision, sensitivity, selectivity, and measurability. In the laboratory, students will put the theory and principles into practice by performing various analytical experiments designed to provide examples of the usefulness of selected instruments or techniques in a way that will enable the student to understand and operate a wide range of other related instruments for soil ecosystem analyses. Thus, while the laboratory experiments and demonstrations will illustrate some of the applications of the instruments, students will be expected to develop a deep understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of different instrument analytical techniques in terms of their usability, sensitivity, cost, and other parameters with emphasis on the applicability and complementarity of different techniques to soil ecosystem chemical measurements.