The Litter Composition

The soil litter is the top layer of the soil, also called “O horizon” (“O” for Organic, and “horizon” means the different stratums of the soil). It generally refers to the dead plant material that has fallen to the ground such as leaves, bark, needles and twigs.

It is composed of dead organic material that falls to the ground during the year and is added to the litter.

We thought it was interesting to know more about the litter composition and so we proposed an experiment that could help us learning some things about it.

Material we'll need:

A Shovel

A Stereo Microscope

Gloves

An identification key

Tweezers

A Blouse

A big container

1 Petri Dish

A Camera

Some Alcohol

Protocol:

1. Pick up a big litter soil sample in the forest and observe what kind of things we can see on the soil such as sweet papers, cigarettes…

2. With a stereo microscope, find some different kind of insects or anything special that could be a part of the litter composition.

3. Pick up with tweezers and put all the insects we found on a Petri Dish as we can identify it.

4. Identify them with an identification key (Click here to see it)

5. Take some photos of the insects we collected.

6. Take notes of our observations.

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