Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 12/02/2013 - 12:08
Forums
Soil Ecology in Antarctic Dry Valleys

How do you keep the soil from contaminating? Did you ski in Antarctic yet? What are other organism beside bacteria? How much does your bag weight?

Tue, 12/03/2013 - 18:46

Justin Kendhammer

Hi Kailani,Thank you for the thoughtful questions.We avoid contamination from chemicals, ourselves, and other soils by wearing gloves, using sterile containers and instruments, and changing these instruments or cleaning them between contacts with different soils. I cannot even tell you how many times we have run the autoclave while we were processing our soils to keep everything clean.I did ski and it was great.So, I think this is a pretty complete list: bacteria, nematodes, viruses, archaea, and protozoa. Each bag of soil samples weighs between four and five pounds, mostly dependent on water content.See you soon.JK