Transect inventory protocol

When to survey

Fall, before the first killing frost. Summer annuals are still identifiable, and winter annual and perennial rosettes are coming up. In southeast Kansas this window usually closes in late October.

Spring, March to April. Winter annuals such as henbit, purple deadnettle, chickweed and cleavers are active, along with dandelion rosettes and clover. Survey before burndown if you can.

Re-survey the same transects each season, and note any herbicide, tillage or grazing since the last visit.

What to bring

• Phone with the Field inventory tool open once while online, so it works offline
• 1 m × 1 m quadrat frame (PVC works well)
• 50 m (165 ft) tape or measuring wheel
• Flags or stakes for transect ends
• Spade or trowel
• Soil sample bags, labels (printed from the tool) and a permanent marker
• Cooler with ice packs for soil samples
• Newspaper for pressing specimens
• Hand lens and a small ruler for photo scale
• Clear, straight-sided bottle, for measuring slope from a photo
• Straight board or 4 ft level, for measuring slope
• Soil probe and sample bags, if pairing soil samples

Where to put transects

Survey each habitat as its own survey in the tool. For each pilot field, aim for the transects below, and see Zones within a field for splitting fields further:

• Two in-field transects, one in a high-yielding zone and one in a low-yielding zone from your yield maps. Start at least 30 m (100 ft) in from the field edge and run across the crop rows, so the line crosses rows and wheel tracks in proportion.
• One transect in each non-crop habitat that touches the field: headland or field entrance, fencerow, grassed waterway, creek edge.
• One reference transect in the nearest native prairie or native hay meadow, if one is available. This shows what long-undisturbed local soil supports.

In narrow habitats such as fencerows and waterways, run the transect along the length of the habitat.

Zones within a field

Fields are not uniform. A dry hilltop, a wet footslope and a compacted headland can have different soils, fertility and plant communities, and averaging them together hides the differences the method depends on. Zones let you keep them apart.

• Best: import a zone map. If the project has run a backgrounder for the field, import its zones.geojson under Zone frameworks in the tool. Every stop is then tagged with its zone automatically from its GPS location, with nothing to tap, and you can still correct any stop on the ground.
• Otherwise pick a zone framework when you start a survey. The tool includes a draft six-zone landscape framework (dry convex upland, productive midslope, wet footslope, drainage concentration, compacted headland, relatively undisturbed margin), the standard hillslope positions used in U.S. soil surveys, and yield stability zones. You can copy any of them and edit the copy, or build your own.
• Draw zones before you go out. Useful sources are several years of yield maps, elevation or slope maps, the county soil survey, bare-soil aerial images, electrical conductivity maps if you have them, and above all the farmer's own knowledge of where the field stays wet, dries first or gets driven on.
• Where possible, keep each transect inside one zone. If a transect crosses a boundary, change the zone in the tool before adding the next stop. Each stop keeps its own zone, and the summary breaks results down by zone.
• Keep soil samples separate by zone. Never mix cores from different zones into one bag.
• Zones are a judgment call. Record the zone you actually see at the stop, even if the map says otherwise, and note the disagreement.

Walking a field

Before, or instead of, a measured transect, simply walk the field photographing what interests you. On the field page tap Walk the field. Each photo is stamped with where and when it was taken, filed into the zone you were standing in, and drawn on a map of the field as you go. Naming the plant, judging how thick the stand is and how it looks are optional and can wait until you are back at the table.

This is the fastest way to build the plant list and the photo set Anscari asks for, and it needs no tape, no quadrat and no setup. Use the measured transect below when you want numbers that can be compared between zones, farms and seasons.

Laying out a transect

1. Run a 50 m line. Flag both ends.
2. In the tool, start a survey and fill in the site, field, habitat and what crop, cover or residue is present.
3. Plan 10 stops, one every 5 m. At each stop, place the quadrat on the right-hand side of the line, touching it.

At each stop

1. On a phone, tap Field mode at the top of the survey. It takes over the screen, keeps it awake, and is built for one thumb: the plants you have already found on this farm sit as big buttons, cover and stage are single taps, and saving drops you back for the next plant. Tap Next stop here when you move along the tape.
2. If you are working on a laptop or want the full form, stand at the quadrat and tap Add stop here instead. The tool records your location and zone, then asks for the slope.
3. Record the slope at the quadrat as percent grade, measured along the steepest downhill direction. The tool asks for it right after you add the stop. Three ways to get it:
   • Phone: lay a straight board or level (1–2 m) across the quadrat pointing straight downhill, set the phone flat on it with the top edge pointing downhill, and tap Measure with phone. Hold still for three seconds.
   • Clinometer or hand level: read percent directly, or measure the drop over a known distance. A 1 ft drop over 20 ft is 5%.
   • Photo of a water line: set a clear, straight-sided bottle about half full of water on the board and photograph it from the side. In the tool, tap From a photo, then tap both ends of the water line and both ends of the board edge. Water always settles level, so the angle between the two lines is the slope, however the phone is held. The photo is kept with the stop as a record.
   • By eye or from a map: fine when nothing else is at hand. The tool records which method you used.
4. Add every plant species rooted inside the quadrat. For each one, record:
   • Cover class, the share of the quadrat it covers seen from directly above: 1 (0–5%), 2 (5–25%), 3 (25–50%), 4 (50–75%), 5 (75–95%), 6 (95–100%).
   • Growth stage: seedling, vegetative or rosette, flowering, seed set, or senescent.
   • Vigor (poor, fair, good) and leaf color if anything stands out.
5. Every photo is saved with when and where it was taken. The tool uses the photo's own GPS and time when the phone keeps them; phones often strip them when a photo goes to a web page, so otherwise it records the phone's location when you add the photo. Add photos while standing at the stop.
6. If you are not sure of a plant, type what you know, choose “Not on the list”, and keep Needs identification checked. Take photos of the whole plant, a leaf, any flower or seed head, and the roots. Bag a specimen labeled with the site and stop number.
7. Spend one minute looking at the soil surface in the quadrat. Record insects and soil life in the stop notes: earthworm castings, springtails, beetles, ant mounds.
8. Note bare soil, residue cover, crusting, standing water or a wheel track.

Roots of candidate source plants

Once per transect, dig one plant of each species that the tool tags as a candidate source (for example clover, dandelion or plantain), from just outside the quadrats. Note rooting depth and branching in that plant's notes. On legumes, cut a few nodules open: pink to red inside means they are actively fixing nitrogen.

Pairing soil samples

Take one composite soil sample per transect and zone, and log it in the tool so every bag stays tied to the plants found around it.

1. In the survey, open Soil samples and tap Add soil sample. Pick the zone; the tool ticks the stops in that zone. It suggests an ID like IOLA-N80-26-01 (farm, field, year, number).
2. Label the bag with that ID before it gets dirty. Labels can be printed ahead of time on 30-per-sheet address labels: open the samples list and choose Print bag labels. For labels made ahead, leave the collection date blank and fill it in on the day.
3. Pull 10 to 15 cores at 0–15 cm (0–6 in), spread along the part of the transect in that zone, and mix them in one bag. Never mix cores from different zones. Skip wheel tracks, fertilizer bands and odd spots, and note anything you threw out.
4. Keep samples for biology tests (Haney, PLFA, enzymes) cool, in a cooler in the field and a refrigerator after, and ship them early in the week so they don't sit in a warm depot over a weekend.
5. Suggested tests are a standard fertility panel, a Haney or soil respiration test, PLFA, and enzyme activities (β-glucosidase, phosphatase, arylsulfatase). Sample in the same season window each year so results compare.

After the field day

1. On the tool's home screen, tap Download backup. Keep it somewhere other than the phone.
2. Tap Export all as CSV and send it to the project team.
3. Before shipping soil, open Soil samples on the home screen, select the bags going out, print a Lab submission sheet to put in the box, and use Mark selected as shipped to record the lab, date and tracking number. When results come back, open each sample, enter the key numbers and attach the report.
4. Press specimens flat between newspaper. Post photos of unknowns to a plant ID service or send them to your local extension office, then update the record once identified.

Keeping surveys comparable

• Use the same transects each season. The flags and the recorded locations of each stop help you find them.
• Keep the same surveyor where possible, or survey the first transect together to calibrate cover estimates.
• Record what you see, not what you expect. Unknowns are fine; guesses marked as certain are not.