Soil sampling blioblitzlet with Counter Culture Labs, for Earth Day?

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Hi all,

We're planning to do a little event with Counter Culture Labs, in honor of Earth Day and the UN International Year of Soils - probably on Saturday April 25, or Sunday April 26. Just wondering if people from N4N would be interested in collaborating on this - maybe even do a mini BioBlitz?

We're just in the brainstorming phase right now, but here's the idea:

We are planning to do soil sampling in a number of locations in Oakland, especially along the course of Temescal Creek, where it comes out of the Oakland hills, around Temescal Lake, where it comes above ground in Frog Park, and then where it flows out into the Bay near Emeryville. We may do some water sampling as well, but  the main focus would be on soil. We'll likely do some sampling closer around the Omni building on 48th and Shattuck as well.

I was thinking people from N4N might be interested in doing a mini bioblitz focusing on plants growing on the soil (duh), and/or insect and invertebrate diversity in the soil. From our side, we would be doing some lab analysis in-house, and submitting soil (and/or water) samples for microbial diversity sequencing, lead content, and secondary metabolites analysis (through http://www.drugsfromdirt.org/).

So - any interest in doing something along these lines? Could be as simple as showing some of our CCL members how to use iNaturalist, or as complex as doing a BioBlitz - depending on how much interest there is on your side…

Thanks!

Patrik