The overview of the exhibition of the Soil Science Faculty, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Hi guys, I'm Shtukence, and today I'm at the Faculty of Soil Science of Moscow State University, in the very heart of soil science.
Let's see what the schedule of soil scientists is today, so is colloid chemistry or general soil science? All right, look for yourself if you want, but I want to move on, to the third floor - the Department of General Soil Science. Who remembers these places? Maybe you even studied here, write in the comments.
But if you have never been here, now I will show you what interesting things you can see here. Now we are on the third floor of the Faculty of Soil Science, a real soil exhibition is organized here. For example, Kashtanozem is found in dry steppes, for example, in Russia you can find such soil in Kalmykia, the Volgograd and Saratov regions, Buryatia and so on. These soils are formed in conditions of insufficient moisture and poor vegetation.
There is a separate stand with interesting exhibits of what can be found in the soil. This is, for example, a piece of the surface of solonchak (a salt marsh) - soil in which there are a lot of soluble salts and it is not so easy for plants to live in it, only some halophytes can live here.
And this interesting jewel-like ball is spherical nodules of silicon oxides with Liesegang rings. These are the specific concentric rings that are produced when these deposits form and they even look a little like tree rings.
The brown ball on the left is a ground beetle nest from the brown soils of China, and nodules found near the pyramids of Cheops in Egypt. There is a whole stand of various forms of accumulation of iron and other compounds in soils, you can even see gypsum druze from Turkmenistan.
In general, all these pebbles and strange things - this is what you can find inside the soil, if you dig deep there. This is the so-called new formations or soil inclusions, For example, such river alluvium and alluvial hardpan from Egypt. And beautiful gypsum druze even look like stone roses. But these striped things on the left, similar to chips, are just Egyptian alluvium and they form next to the river, such hard surfaces, these particular ones came from Egypt.
Black and brown thing to the right is petrified wood. Interestingly, the process of petrification takes place underground. For example, a tree turned out to be underground and water with various mineral substances flows through it, and gradually this water enters the cells of the wood, and the wood itself decays and only sediment remains, for example, quartz, and this quartz repeats the original structure of the tree and, accordingly, petrified the tree is in fact already a stone; nothing remains of the tree in it, but the structure of the tree has been preserved.
For a soil scientist, of course, it is also very important to know the rocks, so soil scientists study geology very seriously. Here, for example, is an interesting stand of metamorphic rocks. Metamorphic are those that have occurred by changing the original igneous or sedimentary rocks. And igneous rocks - these are actually those that you see now, they appeared, relatively speaking, from magma. And then metamorphic ones can already appear from them if they are affected by different physico-chemical conditions. This collection is certainly not the widest, there is a more extensive collection of rocks in the main building. But it's also pretty interesting.
There is a stand with a solid phase of atmospheric precipitation, that is, it rained, but what else fell out with it?
I also really liked the idea of how soils were placed in cups at our Faculty of Soil Science. For example, abrazems. These are soils that do not have upper diagnostic horizons, because, for example, they have weathered or disappeared by anthropogenic means.
There are also very interesting anti-erosion exhibits - nets on the soil surface, which can be placed on a slope so that the soil does not fly away. And nearby are the seeds of the so-called biomats - that is, plants from which you can plant a surface that will also be anti-erosion. Here is such a corner of nice little soil science with a hedgehog, cones and drawings.
The most innovative part of the exhibition, is these glass, in which the soil was placed. You can literally collect a mini-soil crossection in a glass, you get a soil smoothie or a soil cocktail. Here you see a podzol - a wonderful demonstration and at the same time an interesting idea of how you can make such illustrative materials on soil science.
Another cool exhibit is a pretty fresh 2013 soil monolith from Polibino. This is the soil from our zonal practice, where students go to study the soils of different soil zones in Russia. They brought here such a nice soil monolith with a very interesting feature of morphology: look at this black circle down here,this is not just some kind of drawn circle - this is a real molehill (the route of a mole), the mole moved in the soil and brought the upper horizon down, leaving a trail behind it.
By the way, this is Nik, hello! A few years ago, he brought a similar soil monolith to the World Soil Museum in the Netherlands. You can watch a video about this.
Also, this exhibition contains various soil inclusions. Everything that you read about in textbooks on soil morphology - here you can see with your own eyes. All this looks very interesting, much more interesting than in photographs or pictures. Oh, look, this is a a bone of some kind, maybe even a dinosaur, it's from Egypt.
The most amazing thing is that all these pebbles and unusual things are actually found in soils. This is a real invention of nature, because it all looks fantastically beautiful.
On my way back, I met Nik, who was looking at additional soil exhibits - these are soil racks that are filled with soil monoliths. It's time to go to a new expedition to bring new soil monoliths for the museum. Hope you enjoyed this video. Write comments what you think. See you!