Data organization for soil metabolism and soil degradation studies with microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

Certain steps for soil metabolism and soil degradation studies are repetitive and must transpire for each study. These steps are the data on initial combustion of soil, the extraction data, volatile-recovery data, and postextraction soil combustion data. A summary page that includes all these data has been developed and used successfully to document all the raw data associated with these steps on one form. Weights, volumes, and liquid scintillation data can then be entered into an Excel spreadsheet formatted to accept and process these raw data to provide the calculated data required for reporting. This information is centrally located for each sampling time period, which facilitates and streamlines quality assurance (QA) review of this study file. An explanation of the process and examples of the forms is provided.