topsoil

A local group found the fungus that causes valley fever in samples of topsoil from the five parcels surrounding the towns where the solar panels will be built.

He said that you can either dig on the seafloor, or “underneath equatorial rainforests. And that means that to get access to it, you need to push out the Indigenous people living there. You need to remove the rainforest, dig away the topsoil to get to the nickel bearing ore. And that’s just the beginning of the impacts, because then there is waste.”

Measuring soil organic carbon, for example, requires digging a core to the root zone, about 30 centimeters deep to obtain a topsoil profile and until the core hits bedrock to obtain an entire soil profile.

Some, like the fescues, can do well in shade, but Lyon recommends prepping the soil by tilling the topsoil 4 to 6 inches deep and adding a mixture of compost and a drainage medium like decomposed granite or sand to encourage good drainage, especially if the ground previously had standing water during heavy rains.

The topsoil, comprised of the top 10 to 12 centimetres of the soil, acts as a kind of "death zone" in which fresh grass cannot survive for long.