Soil Pit Survey iRecord Form

A new iRecord form has been developed by the Earthworm Society of Britain (ESB) to facilitate the recording of Soil Pit Survey data. This will enable the ESB to collect both earthworm species records and transect level data on abundance for soil pit surveying going forward.

Where to find the Soil Pit Survey form on iRecord

The form has been added to the National Earthworm Recording Scheme iRecord activity and can be accessed by choosing the 'Enter Soil Pit Survey' option in the screenshot below.

What is different about the Soil Pit Survey form

The Soil Pit Survey form differs from the standard 'Enter Earthworm Records' form in a number of ways.

• The 'Soil Pit Survey' form is split over three tabs instead of two. 

1. Recorders do not enter a sampling method. The form instead asks the recorder to enter the number of pits dug for a given sample. Behind the scenes this will be recorded as (i) '401 soil pit sampling' where the number of pits is equal to anything other than 5 (ii) '402 NERS 5 soil pit protocol' where the number of pits is equal to 5.
    
2. Recorders enter the number of unidentified earthworms discarded or returned to the soil. Combined with the species records provided in the species table, this will give a measure of earthworm abundance. This information will be stored at the sample transect level.

This work was created by Keiron Derek Brown on behalf of the Earthworm Society of Britain and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.