6th July 2006, 11:44 AM
As with all environmental sampling, contamination has to be kept to a minimum.
smoking is not recomended, as the ash will add extra contaminates to the soil. With soil processing for phosphate-p, mag sus or loi anaylis, the method for sampling proparly would be to use plastic over metal and to clean the area before sampling, and to clean the tools before each sample both at depths (topsoil/ subsoil) and locations. due to the small amount of soil needed for this process (typicaly a large hand full of soil or two) you will want to minimise contamination, however, the lab prep and processing as well as the statistical work on the results should be able to filter out any anomolys from the data. but remember all enviromental sampling should be conducted with minimum contamination.
if you are to sample for coleoptra, you again need to clean the tools between each measured layer of bulk, as you take your samples, as the samples are processed acording to there depth, so idealy you do not want the tisk of beatles from the layer above contaminating the sample from the layer below it or worse, a layer sevral samples below that.
smoking is not recomended, as the ash will add extra contaminates to the soil. With soil processing for phosphate-p, mag sus or loi anaylis, the method for sampling proparly would be to use plastic over metal and to clean the area before sampling, and to clean the tools before each sample both at depths (topsoil/ subsoil) and locations. due to the small amount of soil needed for this process (typicaly a large hand full of soil or two) you will want to minimise contamination, however, the lab prep and processing as well as the statistical work on the results should be able to filter out any anomolys from the data. but remember all enviromental sampling should be conducted with minimum contamination.
if you are to sample for coleoptra, you again need to clean the tools between each measured layer of bulk, as you take your samples, as the samples are processed acording to there depth, so idealy you do not want the tisk of beatles from the layer above contaminating the sample from the layer below it or worse, a layer sevral samples below that.