Last year about this time Tozier asked What’s in dirt? How much?:

Let’s define a “molecular species” in the context of this thought experiment as a particular arrangement of covalently-bonded atoms (I’m ignoring hydrogen bonds, ionic associations and other supramolecular complexes for the sake of sanity). But just to make things challenging, say we count ionization states and radicals as different molecular species, too.

So, you have a little pile of dirt? Great. Stop time. I want to look at it instantaneously.

Make a list of all the molecular species in that sample. Count how many individual examples there are of each molecule.

Got that? Good. Now make a little histogram of the molecular species, sorted in order of decreasing occurrence. So the common stuff like atmospheric gases and common mineral stuff will be over at the left, and weird, rare gunk like bug metabolites and DNA will be over at the right end. Draw it. Show me.

Hell, show the world. As long as you can justify your answer, you’re done. You may now herald the dawn of a new era in separation chemistry, complex chemical reaction networks, and cheminformatics. Even if you just guessed well.

And some of that stuff is alive.

"Computational Improvements Reveal Great Bacterial Diversity and High Metal Toxicity in Soil," by Jason Gans, Murray Wolinsky and John Dunbar, of Los Alamos' Bioscience Division, describes a new approach to capturing the structure of bacterial communities in soil. . .

Why is this important, you ask? It turns out that in our technology-driven world, with biosensors in development for homeland security, emerging diseases surprising our medical communities and lifesaving medicines being extracted from jungle plants, we still don't know what's under our feet. The bacterial communities of every day soil are intensely complex, so diverse and densely populated, that normal measurement methods are overwhelmed.

Dirt is important and mysterious, so it's good news that Philip Small - a.k.a paleorthid, a.k.a. Dr. Dirt - has begun a blog: Transect Points - views from the ground down.

The opening post What is Soil Science? really is a must read item for those of us who aspire to doing some shade tree dirt doctoring of our own. Be sure to follow the links, especially to this Wikipedia entry by Philip and others.

I've exchanged emails with Philip in the past on issues I sought more information about. He was generous with his time and thorough in his responses. I hope his interest in blogging and his intent to "write twice a week about life as we know it and the trials and tribulations of dirt doctoring" continues.

I wonder how he might answer Tozier's question?