F.7 Geography Field Trip

This year, the form 7 Geography students attended a one-day field trip on the topic “Soil Analysis” organized by the Caritas Chan Chun Ha Field Studies Centre in Cheung Chau. We held experiments and discussion on the topic in order to examine the properties of soil and to analyze the interaction between soil and environmental factors.

After a short briefing on the soil properties, we started our fieldwork by getting the two soil samples; hence we observed and examined the soil temperature, vegetation coverage and the soil infiltration rate at two different sites. It facilitated our laboratory work later in which we tried to investigate the soil water content, the proportion of organic matters, the soil pH value and the nutrients level. As long as we have manipulated the data obtained from the experiment, we held a discussion and gave presentation to the real-life problem correlated with the specific soil characteristics.

Not only did the field trip help us to understand the relative interaction between the soil characteristics and its natural environment, but it also revealed the importance of “putting theory into practices”. By finishing the discussion and presentation on the given real-life problem, we learnt how to depict the farming constraints and to think of the concerned solutions to the problems. The ultimate principle of studying geography are to assess the man-land relationship and hence to search for the possible solutions. Meanwhile, the field trip provided a valuable opportunity for the form 7 students to relax our burden of public examination in such a busy workload!