The soil zones of Saskatchewan: Creating art to visualize the concept

Summary

Ken is a Professor Emeritus of Forest Soils from the Department of Soil Science at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. His research career investigated forestry impacts on soil properties and tree growth as well as quantifying carbon sequestration in forest shelterbelts in the prairies. However, it wasn’t until he started incorporating art into his soil field courses in 2004 at the historic Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus, that he began his artistic adventure of creativity and play using paints, soil and charcoal. His artistic journey created a new way for him to connect and understand boreal forest ecosystems.

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Above image: Soil zones of Saskatchewan agricultural areas (SKSIS Working Group¹).

How many more interesting possibilities are out there when art and science collide!”

Beginnings

The first half of my career was dominated by science through both my research and teaching, and I had little time or understanding for anything art related. However, a chance visit to an art gallery, lead me to explore the idea of incorporating the visual arts into my soil science field courses (Hartemink et al.²). The success of this approach of merging science and art together in my course lead me to start making pigments and artworks with soil, which was so rewarding as I had dedicated my career to just understanding the science of the earth’s “living skin.” This development resulted in teaching graduate courses with both art and science students to create pigments from soils and natural materials collected in Saskatchewan (van Rees and van Donkelaar³). Finding art in the middle of my career and incorporating it with science reinvigorated my teaching career, but were there other opportunities to utilize this science-art connection? The motivation for this science-art project arose from a recent collaboration where I had the opportunity to interact with scientists at Global Waters Futures at the University of Saskatchewan (Arnal et al.⁴). Artists were paired with water researchers to create artworks based on the researcher’s results for the purpose of conveying the scientific results that the general public could engage with. The interactions resulted in gallery exhibitions and a virtual water gallery (https://www.virtualwatergallery.ca) for the public to view and respond to. As a soil scientist and artist, this collaboration inspired me to think about some of the concepts I taught in soil science, and how I might use my artistic practice to visually present them to students and the public.

Art and science

In Saskatchewan Canada, students and faculty in soil science are familiar with the popular soil zone map for the Canadian Prairies that was first depicted by our second Department Head A.H. Joel in 1928 (Joel⁵). The map for the Canadian Prairies was divided into five soil zones that reflected the influence of climate and vegetation on the region. Each zone was originally identified by soil color and vegetation communities and moving from south to north were: 1. Greyish brown (short grass plains), 2. Brown or chocolate plains (short and medium grasses), 3. Dark brown or chestnut brown prairie-plains, 4. Black parklands (tree clumps and tall grass prairies, and 5. Greyish timber soils (Podzols and partial Podzols) (Anderson and Smith⁶). The soil zones (from south to north) are currently named after the prevailing color of the surface horizons (i.e., Brown, Dark Brown, Black, Gray, and Dark Gray) (Image 1). We all have a visual picture of what these colors represent on a map; however, what do the surface soils really look like if one were to visit the soils in each of the different soil zones? To accomplish this idea, I decided to travel along highways in north-south transects to collect soil samples to visually display the colors of the soil zones.

The project consisted of sampling soils from three north-south transects using the highway infrastructure in Saskatchewan: 1. Highway 9 on the east side of the province from U.S. Customs at Northgate to Hudson Bay, 2. Highway 2 in the middle of the province from U.S. Customs at West Poplar River to Weyakwin, and 3. Highway 21 on the west side of the province from U.S. Customs at Willow to Pierceland. Each north-south transect would cover all five soil zones and transects varied from 500 to 700 km in length. Surface soil samples were collected from adjacent fields, pastures, or forests with a shovel every 25 km along these transects using a randomly selected starting point near the Canada-U.S. border. The samples were air-dried at the Department of Soil Science drying facility and then ground and sieved (2 mm). Samples for carbon analysis were further ground and sieved to a size of <250 μm. The soil samples were analyzed for organic carbon (OC) content using an automated C632 LECO analyzer (LECO Corporation, St. Joseph, MI, USA) at a combustion temperature of 1100°C and a maximum combustion time of 10 min (Dhillon et al.⁷).

Soil rubbings for the transect along highway 2 in Saskatchewan. Far left side represents the sample collected at the southern Canada/U.S.A. border site at West Poplar River and moving to the right represents each sample collected every 25 km north along highway 2 to the community of Weyakwin.

Soil samples were used to create rubbings on watercolor paper (about 30 cm wide) for each of the transects. The soil rubbings idea came from reading about herman de vries, a scientist turned artist from the Netherlands (van Breeman⁸). de vries has been making soil rubbings from soils collected around the world (for more info see https://www.groundworkgallery.com/artist/herman-de-vries/) and I wanted to use this approach for my soil highway project. Due to the linearity of the sampling design, the sampling locations were presented as transects for each highway as rubbings on watercolor paper (Image 2). Soil samples were rubbed by hand onto the watercolor paper.

The artwork was hung in a hallway in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan (Image 3). The artwork was described with a QR code (https://agbio.usask.ca/documents/art/soil-art-web.pdf), for students and public to download. The QR code directs one to a website with information that outlines the background of the study, a map of where the soils samples were collected along each highway transect, soil zone boundaries as well as information on land cover, GPS coordinates, and the OC levels (%) for each sample.

In addition, the artworks and associated information from the QR code have been used in undergraduate soil science laboratories where students have learned how OC varies across the soil zones. The color of the soil is often a reflection of the amount of organic matter in the soil. In prairie soils, this organic matter is derived from the accumulation of decomposing roots of grassland plants. The southern portion of the province has reduced rainfall and short grasses and thus less root inputs to the soils resulting in the brown and dark brown soil zones. Moving further north there is increasing amounts of rainfall and tall grassland species that have greater inputs of root biomass to the soil resulting in darker soil colors (black soil zone). The darker color of the soils generally indicates higher organic matter levels and ultimately results in better soil fertility for growing crops. Additional soil samples that were collected from this project were also used by students in laboratories to measure organic matter across the different soil zones.

Challenges and opportunities

My perspective may be somewhat different from others as I am both the artist and scientist which provides a unique perspective than from one where an artist is collaborating with a scientist. When I first started incorporating art into my science courses, my science colleagues had reservations of what I was trying to accomplish, although the students fully embraced the approach. However, after almost 20 years of incorporating art in my science course, my colleagues have recognized the value of this pedagogical approach and the Department continued to offer my course even after I retired because of the value it added to experiential learning. For those who are wanting to initiate a science-art collaboration, don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and take a risk even if it is not fully embraced by everyone, because I believe there is a growing momentum for these kinds of collaborations and that in the future they will be the norm.

Many institutions do not recognize science/art collaborations for researchers as a valued output for tenure and promotion – many times it is not peer reviewed. In my case, I was at the end of my career and the soil artwork had no bearing on promotion or salary review. But I did receive teaching awards for the innovation of including art into my science courses. However, with the growing importance of art and science collaborations, especially for presenting research results in a format that can be understood and appreciated by the public, institutions need to include new criteria that is inclusive of these collaborations between artists and scientists whether they fall under extension or research/teaching categories.

An important benefit of the art-science collaboration is the ability to disseminate research results to the general public utilizing art rather than scientific graphs and tables. I believe from my experiences that there is a real acceptance by the public of this avenue for presenting research results as the art can create the voice that the public will understand better. The artworks whether displayed as visual, music, performance based or written, translates results from its scientific jargon to something that is more personal and engaging to the public. Artists and scientists working together, should also be aware that there is a language barrier between the two disciplines, and it will take time and energy to learn the “jargon” and understand each other’s viewpoints when collaborating on a project. It is important, however, to find artist and scientists who are willing to work together to make these collaborations successful.

Soil zone artworks project mounted in the hallway of the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan.

The last perspective regarding art and science collaborations is what role, if any, does each discipline have in informing the other? Can art inform science and vice-versa, can science inform art? I don’t have an answer to these questions except to say I have seen that there is some degree of interaction between the two fields that could be useful. Both art and science take different approaches to understanding a problem and the combination of using both approaches from different perspectives could yield interesting solutions. As I collected the soil samples along the transects, I wondered if there was a relationship between Munsell soil color and the OC content – would it be linear, non-linear? Does grinding soil change the soil color – would I be better off just taking that raw sample from the field and rubbing it directly onto the watercolor paper? How many more interesting possibilities are out there when art and science collide!