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(Brown, 1965) having an inside diameter of 2 .1 cm and an outside
diameter of 2 .6 cm .
Unfrozen peat was sampled with a Hiller peat
sampler (MacFarlane, 1969) . Soil temperatures were taken at depths
of 2 .5, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 cm using a thermistor type YSI Model 42
SC Tele-Thermometer .
Free water associated with poorly drained
organic soils was also sampled for chemical analysis .
In perennially
frozen organic and .fine-textured mineral soils frozen core samples
were taken using the Hoffer probe for determination of the ice content
on a volume basis .
In coarse-textured soils and stony till materials
the ice content was determined on a weight basis using approximately
100 gms . of frozen soil .
5 .2 . Laboratory Methods
The ice content was determined in the
propane gas oven for drying the samples .
field laboratory using a
Ice content then was calculated
by measuring the water content and using the density of pure ice
(0 .9168 g cm 3 ) at 0 °C and a pressure of 1 atm . (Pounder, 1965) . Soil
and water samples were shipped to the Soil Survey Laboratory at
Winnipeg for analysis .
The chemical analysis was carried out according to the method of
Kilmer and Alexander (1949) .
The pH of organic soils was determined
with KCl and that of mineral soils with CaCl 2
.
For both mineral and
organic soils the organic carbon was determined by the modified
method of Peech et al . (1947), the electrical conductivity by the
method of the United States Salinity Laboratory (1954) and the nitrogen
by the Kjeldahl procedure (Atkinson et al ., 1958) . The cation exchange