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Air dry moisture content (2A1)

This method is required to adjust soil chemical results based on air-dry samples to an oven-dry (105oC)
basis. When the air-dry moisture content (M%) is known, the correction from air-dry
to oven-dry is as follows:

 

            Oven-dry result  =   [Air-dry result  x  (100+ M%)]/100

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Exchangeable Bases - Ammonium Acetate (15D3)

 

Exchangeable bases - 1M ammonium acetate at pH 7.0.

 

This rapid method for exchangeable cations in non-saline acidic through to slightly alkaline soils has no pre-treatment for soluble salts. It should yield similar data to those of method 15A1, except it can overestimate exchangeable Ca in soils containing calcium carbonate.

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Total soil nitrogen semi micro Kjeldahl, steam distillation. (7A1)

Method 7A1 provides a good estimate of total soil N in soils with little NO3: otherwise slightly lower apparent total soil N concentrations are likely. The method initially involves semi-micro Kjeldahl digestion. Subsequently, NaOH solution is added to release NH3 by steam distillation. The NH3 released is quantitatively absorbed in dilute boric acid, with total soil N determined by titration with standard acid. The method uses finely-milled air-dry sample and specifies reporting results as %N on an oven-dry (105oC) basis.