Gave a tour of Rock Springs Research Farm to some visiting scientists today and found this perched water table! Really interesting thing about it is that not even 20 feet away, you find that there isn’t a perched water table when you dig down into the profile. Our soil is very interesting here, where we will have accumulations of clay that form and not allow water to drain down the soil profile adequately. It still amazes me how the soil can be so different between locations so close together!

These small scale differences are why soil sampling for analyzing antibiotics and antibiotic resistance in bacteria is extremely hard! You never know if you are capturing enough detail and data to actually represent what is happening within your given system.

You can find more information about the Research Center at Rock Springs here.

Distance between the location with a perched water table and the location without a perched water table.

Location in a field with a perched water table.

Location without a perched water table.