Lab 04 - Soil Organic matter by loss on ignition (LOI)

Описание: This video was made with the intent of aiding the learning process of SQU undergrad students of the 'SWAE4401 Water & Nutrient Cycling in Soil-Plant Environment' course

Soil Organic Matter Measurement by Loss on Ignition (LOI)
Main Theme: This lecture explains the process of measuring soil organic matter using the Loss on Ignition (LOI) method. The method involves burning soil samples at high temperatures and calculating the weight loss, which represents the organic matter content.
Key Ideas and Facts:
LOI Method: Soil samples are dried overnight at 105°C to remove moisture. They are then burned in a furnace at 500°C for three hours. The weight difference before and after burning represents the organic matter lost.
"We're going to burn the soils and then we're going to see how much is the percentage of weight that the soil lost when we burned it."
Calculations: The percentage of organic matter is calculated using the formula: (Weight loss during burning / Dry weight of soil) * 100.
Moisture Content: The lecture also briefly explains how to calculate moisture content by comparing the weight of the soil before and after drying.
Excel Demonstration: The lecturer demonstrates how to perform these calculations in Excel using a sample dataset of two different soils.
Assumptions and Implications: The lecture introduces assumptions about ash content and carbon content to refine the calculation of organic matter and subsequently, nitrogen content.
"Assuming that we have 15 to 1 this would mean that we have in soil 1 0.0 19 percent of nitrogen uh uh in in soil to 0.1 so it's nearly five times more nitrogen we will have in solitude inside one only due to the fact that we have more organic matter in this soils"
Importance of Organic Matter: The lecture emphasizes the importance of organic matter for soil fertility, particularly its role in providing a slow and steady release of nitrogen to plants.
"The implications of having more organic matter for nitrogen is very high this is considering that the majority of the nitrogen in the soil between 95 and 98 of the nitrogen will be on the organic matter so this is one of the reasons that we have to care so much about organic matter in soils is also because of nitrogen fertility in this mineralization of the organic matter gives a gives a slow supply of nitrogen to plants into our crops"
Further Analysis:

The lecture shows students how to conduct this analysis themselves, including calculating the ANOVA to determine if differences in organic matter content between soil samples are statistically significant.