Hochschule Osnabrück (Germany), Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Landscape Architecture

Our aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of different earthworm species as soil engineers under poorly aerated soil conditions. Therefore a laboratory experiment was conducted using artificial soil columns in which compacted soil blocks prepared with glucose were used. The addition of glucose stimulates the microbial respiration which leads to oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide enrichment, respectively. To measure the soil oxygen content, we used the one-channel version of the oxygen meter FireSting-O2 (FSO2-1) and several bare fiber oxygen sensors (OXB50) positioned in each artificial soil column. The oxygen sensors were consecutively read out by the 1-channel oxygen meter, simply by switching the connectors. However, the calibration data for each oxygen sensor could be easily retrieved during this procedure using the "load setup" and "save setup" functionality in the FireSting logger software.

The research was conducted as a part of the ongoing project entitled RÜWOLA – an acronym for a German research project in the field of forestry and soil protection.