Hydraulic Core Extraction: Cutting Device for Soil–Root Studies

Abstract

A critical objective of belowground research is to collect and process representative soil samples. Mechanical devices have been developed to quickly take soil cores in the field; however, techniques to rapidly process large‐diameter soil cores are lacking. Our objective was to design and construct a soil extraction–cutting system that could effectively reduce processing time. Soil cores were extracted from large diameter steel core tubes using a custom hydraulic cylinder device that vertically pushes the soil core to a desired depth increment before cutting in a horizontal direction with another hydraulically driven device. As many as eight large cores per hour could be processed with this system. This system has been effectively used in processing soil samples from both agricultural and forestry sites to meet desired experimental goals.

Keywords:

• Large‐diameter soil cores
• root sampling
• soil processing

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Barry G. Dorman, John H. Walden, M. Quentin Stoll, Bob H. Washington, and Jerry W. Carrington for technical assistance. Support from Biological and Environmental Research Program (BER), U.S. Department of Energy, Interagency Agreement No. DE-AI02-95ER62088 is gratefully acknowledged.