1. Soil Inquiry By Mary Crabb

2. Observation/Prior Knowledge I knew that different types of soil can be more fertile then others because if you have a garden you would want it to be more fertile so your plants or vegetables can grow, so you'd add fertilizer to it so that will make it more essential to the plants to help them grow compared to a forest that no one has gone to an taken care of an managed.

3. Question How does the soil fertility in a recently clear cut forest differ from the soil fertility in an old growth forest on the North Olympic Peninsula?

4. Hypothesis If we test the old growth soil and the recently clear cut soil, then I think the old growth soil will have higher fertility because it has been undisturbed for a while and has older trees thriving in it.

5. Materials Paper Pencil Recently clear cut soil sample Old growth soil sample LaMotte Soil chemistry kit

6. Procedure 1.Gather all materials needed. 2.In spring 2011 get the recently clear cut plot 1 soil sample from Cameron Road and the old growth plot 1 soil sample from Barnes Point. 3.Get LaMotte soil chemistry kit. 4.Do pH, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium tests on both soil samples. 5.Log data results on paper/data sheet.

7. Data Forest AgepHNitrogen (N)Phosphorus (P) Potassium (K) Recently clear cut 6.0NoneTrace16 med-low Old growth6.0NoneTrace14 med

8. Old growth forest (Barnes Point) Recently clear cut site (Cameron road) Results/ Analysis Old growth forest pHNitrogenphosphoruspotassium 6.0NoneTrace14 med Recently clear cut pHNitrogenPhosphoruspotassium 6.ONoneTrace16 med- low

9. Simple Conclusion No significant difference in the results from the two locations (null hypothesis) For future study I recommend using more soil samples.

10. Full Conclusion In conclusion I have found that there is no significant difference in the results from both locations (plot 1 from Cameron Road, the recently clear cut forest, and plot 1 from Barnes Point, the old growth forest) for pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The pH tests were both 6.0, the nitrogen tests showed that there was none and phosphorus tests showed only a trace. The potassium was the only test with a slight change from 16 medium- low at the recently clear cut to 14 medium for the old growth forest. When doing my tests I only used soil from plot number 1s when there were multiple plots that we took soil samples from. In the future when re investigating this question I recommend using all soil samples from each forest stand. My hypothesis stated that I thought I was going to find out that the old growth forest was going to be more fertile then the recently cleared site. But instead, I got the null hypothesis, which means what we manipulated in the investigation did not produce a significant result. A new question I would suggest for people to examine would be, How does the soil color and texture vary in the different stages of forests.