Missouri Association of Professional Soil Scientists

To Advance The Knowledge And Wise Use Of Our Soil Resources

SPRING MAPSS FLOAT TRIP

By Dick Henderson, Richard Tummons & Dave Skaer

The summer MAPSS social meeting and fishing challenge was a bountiful festival. The company of dedicated soil professionals staggered into the scenic overlook of Pomme De Terre Dam with full assembly by 5 p.ni. One fish was caught prior to the meeting (a sweet 12 inch Mack crappie). It was added to the dinner cuisine of marinated elk loins (major poundage bounty of a (Big) Dick Henderson slaughter) and a full array of crunchies, munchies, and beverages. We owe Dick a big hoorah for the arrangements and accommodations of the meeting. The group of 6 hearty soils ate, drank, and insulted each other to the point of inevitable flatulence. We then departed to a seldom-used honey hole cove on the lake for premium fishing. Intense fishing took place until almost sunset. When five determined soil scientists put their minds to a goal you'd think more than two fish would be landed. We now know why that honey of a hole was seldom used! The party then proceeded to the Henderson mansion for a late round of three on three basketball. The party then proceeded to the lush comforts Dicks' home affords for those so privileged, and conversation late into the night. Only a few things remained to be accomplished after a night such as this and those thing will remain undisclosed until the next festive MAPSS activity.

CURRENT LIST OF MAPSS OFFICERS

President: David Skaer Vice-President: Jerry Gott

Sec./Treasurer: Bill Pauls Past Presidents: Mark Osborn

Members-at-large: Dick Henderson Robert Rouse

Brad McKee

MAPSS MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION

STATUS OF THE MISSOURI STATE SOIL

Bill Pauls, Treasurer, Missouri Association of Professional Soil Scientists (MAPSS)

Unfortunately our Menfro Bill # 1825 ran into some choppy (political) waters. Several state representatives sidetracked it by offering some questions and/or comments. We have the opportunity to do a little more education with the folks from those areas. Representative Klindt, our sponsor of the bill decided to withdraw it from the formnal calendar after the questions/comments came up. He didn't want it to be outright defeated. That would have precluded us from bringing it back next year. We intend to take advantage of the 2nd "win" in our win-win scenario. If we didn't accomplish outright passage this session (first win), then we will increase our efforts to make more Missourians aware of the importance of soil as the most valuable natural resource by bringing it back in upcoming years until we are successful. We get to continue promoting and educating Missouri's citizens.

Menfro fell victim to unrelated (to our bill) partisan wrangling over more contentious issues that has made this session one of the least productive in the history of the legislature. rt is my understanding that of the approximately 1400+ bills offered this session, no more than 14-20 have been approved. The "reasons" (excuses) offered for not passing the bill were "We don't have any of that soil type" and the often heard, rather uneducated sarcasm, " Why do we need a state dirt?" We will work on the education side of the equation and Representative Klindt and friendly colleagues will work on the political side.

We have dealt with all the "reasons" for non passage in the past and could have/would have with the folks against the "dirt bill", but we were unaware they would offer any resistance to the bill until it was too late. That was probably a calculated effort. No one made any effort to ask us questions prior to their comments. Many other bills have been held up as a direct result of the political infighting. Of course Menfro is the most representative soil type in the state because of its extent. locations and high productivity. That is one of the reasons we had representative Klindt sponsor the bill, because he has no Menfro in his district either. He does recognize the value to agriculture, and the state in general, of having a "legislated state soil" as an educational tool. I have been made aware that specious statements, questions and Lirgumenis are standard practice when "other" political objectives are being sought. An advantage of this process is the current education I am getting on how our political system "really" works.

We ask for your help, and especially the help of your members in the "anti-dirt bilir areas. Please ask them to contact their representatives and request them to release Menfro as political hostage next session

The Cahokia Site:

A turn of the 1st Millenium Riverine Society with Urban and Farming Impacts

(Presentation Summary for Soils and Urban Tour Guidebook)

Presenter, Michael Chalfant, Soil Scientist and Cultural Resources Specialist, Department of Natural Resources-Soil and Water Conservation Program, Jefferson City, Missouri.

Acknowledgment: The contents of the presentation summary is a product largely derived from work elated to, and

Writings and oral communications of Dr. William Woods, Professor of Geography and Director of the Contract Archaeological Program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Illinois (SIUE)To learn more/obtain a bibliography, visit the web site: www,siuc.edu/CAHOKIAMOUNDS

The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. a United Nations World Heritage Site, preserves 68 man-made earthen mounds within 2300-acres. A thousand years ago, the aboriginal Cahokia site covered more than 3,300 acres and had over 120 mounds. It was the largest prehistoric Indian city north of Mexico with a population estimated to be around 15,000. The site was an urban development and metropolis with settlements extending about 8 miles west to the modern areas of East St. Louis and St. Louis, Missouri. This prehistoric riverine culture created an extensive anthropogenic landscape in the bottomlands of the Mississippi River valley. Within a few hundred years the city was abandoned leaving behind signs of cultural and environmental degradations.

Starting around 950 A.D. Cahokia was a planned city with a large, central "Grand Plaza". Earthen mounds that supported buildings for administrative and residential personages within a 200-acre precinct border this plaza. The urban area included orderly clusters of mounds and buildings with courtyards and smaller community plazas. Residential neighborhoods and suburbs were connected by streets or avenues. Many of the constructions were aligned along cardinal directions and associated with centralized features. Cahokia is interpreted to be the paramount city, socially/hierarchically linked to smaller civic-ceremonial centers, satellite towns and outlying farmsteads. The Grand Plaza was probably used for regional ceremonies and other corninunal activities,

Three types of mounds were built by this "Mississippian" culture. They consist of conical and ridge-top mounds containing human burials and flat top, pyramidal forms for buildings. Some of the mounds were constructed on basal platforms and are connected by causeways. Cahokia's Grand Plaza fronts the south side of Monks Mound, which is the largest prehistoric earthen structure in North America. This monumental architectural feature is a fortified, pyramidal mound with a 100-foot summit platform. It is 1000 feet long and 775 feet wide and contains around 22 million cubic feet of soil materials amassed over 15 acres of lund. A wooden stairway up the south face of the mound connected the rulers and/or religious leaders; residence to tile plaza and city below with its civic/ceremonial functionaries Around 1000 A.D., Cahokians also constructed a large circular, wood-pole sun calendar referred to as "Woodhendge" and soon after 1150 A.D. Monks Mound and the 200-acre precinct weny enclosed in a stockade, or palisade with projecting bastions,

Mound constructions were not haphazard. They were well planed and evidently soil- engineered. Investigations at Monks Mound have revealed it was constructed of selected soil materials of coarser and finer textures that were borrowed from the floodplain deposits and carried and applied using baskets. Internally, the mound has a clay basal core surmounted by clay-rich buttresses. Massive, stratified fill units of contrasting, clayey and loamy layers then superimpose these structural features. The arrangement/position of the soil bodies effectively stabilize the mound and alleviate the internal hydrology. A veneer of clay may have capped the finished surface of the mound and the remains of a huge building were located on the northern summit. A broad, lower terrace that interfaces with the Grand Plaza was constructed around 1250 A.D. The Plaza is a cut and fill, terrain modification of the former undulating floodplain topography. It's an elevated platform with a slight gradient assisting drainage to the south. Many of the extensive borrow pits used for the city's earthen constructions were filled/reclaimed but some associated with peripheral areas were left open and functioned as ponds.

Residents of uptown Cahokia, with its elevated features, looked out on an expansive (10 miles wide) valley floor with the Mississippi River and upland bluffs in the background. The region's alluvial corridor on the eastern side of the Mississippi River extends for about 80 miles south of the confluence of the Illinois and Missouri Rivers, and is referred to as the "American Bottom". The corridor with its valley-floor streams, oxbow lakes and sloughs, marshlands, forest strips and extensive prairies provided a high bio-diversity for hunting, fishing and plant collecting activities. The diverging river systems provided access to most of the continent's, interior and facilitated travel and trade interest. Items as far away as Appalachia, the Plains, Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico have been recovered at Cahokia and their cultural influence spread and effected many other peoples in the Midwest.

The people of the region were primarily farmers who had gathered into the towns and urban settlements where they maintained gardens of native and exotic cultigens and managed large outfields of maize. Maize production provided the main dietary staple and dependable surpluses would have been needed to support the non-farining members of the urban society. Their technology was tillage with hand tools and no fertilization. They favored soils with silt loam textures derived from fertile, coarse-silty alluvium. Their extensive out fields are fomid associated with the second bottomlands, higher fioodplains and Mns thc'it typically did not flood during the growing season.

With such a large population nucleated/sedentary for three centuries or more in the region the carrying capacity of the environment had been strained. There is accumulating geo-archaeological evidence of environmental degradations. A lot of wood was needed and used for constructions and cooking activities. With the sudden need for thousands of logs for erecting palisades timber clearings became more extensive. Regional investigations are finding evidence of the effects of deforestation and accelerated erosion along the valley-side slopes and increased sediment deposition on bottomland settings that date to around A.D. 1250. The low gradient streams flowing across the floodplains would have been affected by increased runoff Sediment loading of streams, over time, raises base levels and promotes flooding occurrences. Without the stabilizing effects of riparian timber, banks are cut back and channels widen. The accumulating slope wash and increased flooding frequencies with longer inundations would all be ruinous for bottomland farming. In addition, the higher turbidity may have polluted and effected their aquatic food resources. Much of their higher protein needs that supplemented their caloric, maize, intake were derived from fish and shellfish populations.

Investigations also reveal a corresponding change in settlement pattern with reduced population and movements of houses to higher ground. Th~ addition, there is evidence for increased regional welfare and/or raiding. By 1300 A.D, there were only isolated remnant populations in Cahokia and the surrounding region, and signs of the upper ranks/urban society are absent. Monks Mound became prehistorically unattended and now stands as a silent reminder of a once great metropolis.

The City of Wildwood, Missouri, is seeking soil scientists with soil survey experience to conduct site-specific investigations for use in ]and use planning relating to specific development proposals. The City uses a soil-landform based matrix to evaluate sites for their potential use or development. The underlying premise of the matrix is to identify the potential water infiltration and water storage capacities of landforms within watersheds, and to limit construction to where it will have the least likelihood of generating increased stormwater runoff. Qualifications include approved course work totaling 15 houns of soil science courses and two years of field mapping the National Cooperative Soil Survey or, for those not having the 15 hours of soil science credit, five years of field experience in the National Cooperative Soil Survey, preferably in Missouri Ozark terrain. Applicants should be prepared to map local soil attributes at a scale of 1" = 100'.

Send resumes to: Joe Vujnich, Director of Planning, City of Wildwood, 16962 Old Manchester Road, Wudwood, MO, 63040 [City Hall: 636-458-0440]

ED HUGHES

Harold Edwin "Ed" Hughes, 83, Bolivar, long-time SCS soil scientist, died on August 7, 2000 in the Veterans Home in Mount Vernon. He was born December 12, 1916, in Pike County, Missouri. On May 29, 1948 he was united in marriage with Wilina Alice Houx in Warrensburg. He was a graduate of the University of Missouri in 1941 with a degree in agriculture and was a soil scientist with the USDA until his retirement in January 1981

MAPSS sent a memorial contribution to the Bolivar United Methodist Church Building Fund in remembrance of Ed Hughes, longtime Missouri soil scientist.

2001 MAPSS ELECTION BALLOT

Mark your ballot and send it to any MAPSS officer or bring it with you to the meeting.

THE PREZ SEZ

By Dave Skaer

The fall MAPSS business meeting in Hannibal on the evening of October 12th will be another gala event. The standard

business meeting will offer debate, current events, committee reports, voting, and most likely the unexpected as always.

Following the meeting a social event will take place featuring the infamous mixer of exotic cocktails Tom (straight shot)

DeWitt alias (Pappy).

There has been a suggestion that we have a MAPSS Auction during the mixer, with Colonel Questionable presenting the jewels of contributions. The success of this event is dependent on our generous offerings (no car hoods please) as there is a possibility of participation by the forestry clients and speakers for our soil workshop. Remember to pack your contributions and checkbook as we hope to repeat the success of our last auction in St. Louis of 1999.

This past year has seen only minor changes in the legislative stature of soil morphology studies vs. percolation tests. The committee that Dennis Meinert reported on in the last Probauger had a bill get to the floor of the legislature, but was dropped as they were at the end of session. The committee is meeting again this September to formulate a design to get it in front of the legislature. Reports I get from people who do on-sites tell me they are doing very well and the future looks promising. We should continue to write and contact our legislators making them aware of the value of soil morphology and our undenstanding of landscape variability.

The initial stage of soil survey is near the finish line and the 2nd generation is on the horizon. The independence and discovery involved in intensive soil survey is found on few otherjobs. The value of the education and comradery afforded us in our organizations, at meetings, and on the job are priceless. I have enjoyed my years in soil work and the opportunity to serve as MAPSS president. The future holds what we make it and I encourage all new, old, and past members to activate and share the experience, knowledge, joys, and sorrow involved in "diggin the dirt".

Anyone who has given soil education to a group or individual please contact Leon Thompson or Mike Chalfant and give them a run down before the meeting. Also don't forget to bring your auction action items to Hannibal.

Balance 10-1-98 Checking = $1651 Savings = $4786
Balance 9-30-99 Checking = $1877 Savings = $4917
__________________________________________________
Net Change                 $226            $131

Income

   Dues                                    $1430
   Donations                               $50
   Interest Income                         $165
   Cap Sales                               $80
   Auction                                 $328
   Soda Refund from NCSS Meeting           $8
                                          _________
Total Income                               $2053

Expenses

   1998 Fall meeting                       $417
   NRCS Planning meeting in Feb            $197
   Correspondance (Newsletter, stamps,     $387
            stationary, certificates, etc)
   SMSU Soil Judging Team                  $500
   Bill Pauls                              $139
   NCSS Meeting in St. Louis               $63
                                          _________
Total Expenses                             $1703

Net Income                                 $350