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Procedures:

When performing a similar experiment to ours, one must follow the Step-by-Step instructions provided bellow:

Our list of Materials can be found HERE

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Find a forrested area near your school that has concentrated areas of 5 different plant species. (For example, spice bush vs. goutweed vs. sugar maple vs. white grass vs. english ivy.)
  
2. Gather all materials and label 9 bags, 5 bags with each plant type, and 4 bags for each negative control sample.
3.Go to a location in your chosen forrested area and identify a concentrated area of one of the plant species you are comparing.
 4. Flag a location within 5 cm of the visible plant.  
5. Using the soil extractor with a 2.5 cm diameter, take a 15 cm soil core sample and place in an uncontaminated bag with the correct location labeled on it at the flagged location.  
6. Wash soil core extractor with water to prevent contamination. If a stream nearby, you can use a water jug like THIS  
 7. Flag an area without plants within your first location, to serve as a negative control.  
8. Repeat step 5 with your first negative control area		   
A Sugar Maple Tree
 9. Go to a location with a concentrated area of your second plant. 
10. Repeat steps 4-6 with your second plant.		 Goutweed
11. Flag an area without plants within your second location to serve as a negative control. 
12. Repeat step 5 with your second negative control area 
13. Go to a location with a concentrated area of your third plant. 
14. Repeat steps 4-6 with your third plant.		 Spice Bush
15. Flag an area without plants within your third location to serve as a negative control.
16. Repeat step 5 with your third negative control area
17. Go to a location with a concentrated area of your fourth plant.
18. Repeat steps 4-6 with your fourth plant.		 English Ivy
19. Flag an area without plants within your fourth location to serve as a negative control.
20. Repeat step 5 with your fourth negative control area.
21. Go to a location with a concentrated area of your fifth plant.
22. Repeat steps 4-6 with your fifth plant.		 White Grass
23. Flag an area without plants within your fifth location to serve as a negative control.
24. Repeat step 5 with your fifth negative control area.
25. After you have bagged every soil core sample, you can begin the Chloride test on each sample. 
26.Use a soil test kit to test for Chloride levels. See our Trouble Shooting page for the type of test kit we used.