Compost For Better Boston Soils

This graphic was produced as part of a large-scale multimedia project, Boston Agriculture, for my Online Journalism class with classmates Poncie Rutsch and Matthew Hardcastle. With two more classmates, we created the website, Boston Agriculture, covering the expansion of urban agriculture in Boston in spring 2013. This graphic is part of the Nuts and Bolts section, where we showcase several techniques to grow vegetables more effectively in a cold, urban environment.

Composting turns food and agricultural waste into fresh soil, and Boston soils, being largely contaminated with lead, could use some of that. There is no way to extract lead out of the soil, so dilution is the solution. By mixing in uncontaminated soil, the original soil’s lead concentration drops to more acceptable levels. Mouseover the graphic to view tags, a feature provided by Thinglink.com

View the graphic in the original site here.