-gSSURGO- Using the Soil Data Management Toolbox Steve Peaslee USDA-NRCS National Soil Survey Center Lincoln, Nebraska March

Introduction to gSSURGO: What is it? Where can you get it? Where can you get more information about it? Using the ‘Soil Data Development’ ArcTools for gSSURGO* To create soil property or interpretation maps To create simple reports or graphs To create custom gSSURGO databases 2 Presentation Outline

SSURGO is a dataset consisting of spatial and soil attribute data and metadata 6 shapefiles in the spatial subfolder 1 MS Access database containing 69 soil attribute tables and several business tables Geographic coordinate system (WGS 1984) Consists of a single soil survey area gSSURGO is an ESRI file geodatabase containing all spatial and attribute data 1 discrete Raster (usually 10 meter resolution, aligned to USGS-NLCD and NASS Cropland) 6 Featureclasses (Albers Equal Area projected coordinate system) 69 tables 60 relationship classes Usually consists of multiple soil survey areas Package includes a second file geodatabase (valu_fy2016.gdb) with a single table (valu) gSSURGO is created by merging individual SSURGO datasets on an annual basis 3 SSURGO and gSSURGO comparison

4 Search terms: NRCS, gSSURGO

5 Download gSSURGO from the Geospatial Data Gateway Select option: ‘Order by State’Scroll down through alphabetical data list to find ‘Soils’/’Gridded Soil Survey Geographic (gSSURGO)

Standard gSSURGO product State-tiles Custom gSSURGO Raster Clipped to 6-Digit HUC The standard gSSURGO product is available from the Geospatial Data Gateway in the form of state tiles. CONUS available on special order. Using the ‘Soil Data Development’ toolbox in ArcGIS and a little extra work, databases for custom AOIs can also be created. 6

7 The ‘Soil Data Development’ toolbox is compatible with ArcGIS Desktop 10.1 – It is still under development and has been written using Python 2.7 using only libraries that come with ArcGIS. Most of the tools are best run in ‘foreground’ mode. The ‘Soil Data Development’ toolbox contains five toolsets that work with SSURGO or gSSURGO data: Download SSURGO gSSURGO Database gSSURGO Mapping gSSURGO Reporting SSURGO Data Management ArcTools for SSURGO and gSSURGO data

8 Download SSURGO Toolset - contains several tools designed to facilitate the SSURGO download and import process. With internet access the user can download a single survey or the entire country with a few clicks. ArcTools for SSURGO and gSSURGO data

9 gSSURGO Database Toolset - contains several tools designed to create custom or state-tiled gSSURGO databases and raster layers in single or batch mode. ArcTools for SSURGO and gSSURGO data

10 gSSURGO Mapping Toolset - contains several tools focused on creating ‘Soil Data Viewer’ type maps. ArcTools for SSURGO and gSSURGO data

11 gSSURGO Reporting Toolset - contains three tools focused on creating simple tabular acreage reports and graphs based upon soil map layers. The ‘Pre-Summary’ tool creates a report based upon the component or horizon- level data used to derive the final map unit rating. ArcTools for SSURGO and gSSURGO data

12 SSURGO Data Management Toolset - contains several tools designed to facilitate the creation of multi-county SSURGO datasets compatible with Soil Data Viewer. ArcTools for SSURGO and gSSURGO data

The ‘Map Soil Properties and Interpretations’ tool can generate a large number of standard soil map layers similar to that of Soil Data Viewer. Input can be either ‘MUPOLYGON’ layer or the ‘MapunitRaster…’ layer from the gSSURGO database. Map layers are semi-permanent, unlike Soil Data Viewer. Soil maps based upon the raster layer will render much more quickly than the polygon layer. Control of output layer symbology is very limited in the Python environment. Manual adjustment by the user may be required for some maps. 13 HELP is available for each input parameter ArcTools for SSURGO and gSSURGO data

14 Example of soil map layer created by ‘Map Soil Properties and Interpretations’ tool

15 Example of summary graph created by the ‘Rating Acres’ tool

16 Example of summary table created by the ‘Rating Acres’ tool

Hydrologic soil groups are based on estimates of runoff potential. Soils are assigned to one of four groups according to the rate of water infiltration when the soils are not protected by vegetation, are thoroughly wet, and receive precipitation from long-duration storms. The soils in the United States are assigned to four groups (A, B, C, and D) and three dual classes (A/D, B/D, and C/D). The groups are defined as follows: Group A. Soils having a high infiltration rate (low runoff potential) when thoroughly wet. These consist mainly of deep, well drained to excessively drained sands or gravelly sands. These soils have a high rate of water transmission. Group B. Soils having a moderate infiltration rate when thoroughly wet. These consist chiefly of moderately deep or deep, moderately well drained or well drained soils that have moderately fine texture to moderately coarse texture. These soils have a moderate rate of water transmission….. The ‘Map Soil Properties and Interpretations’ tool automatically populates metadata for reports, layers and tables using narrative information stored in the database. Here is a partial example for the Hydrologic Soil Group map layer: 17 Metadata

Aggregation Method: Dominant Condition; Tiebreak rule: Higher Component Percent Cutoff: 0% GeoDatabase: E:\Geodata\2016\gSSURGO_FY2016\gSSURGO_HUC gdb Rasterlayer: MapunitRaster_HUC Rating Table: SDV_HydrolGrp_DCD Layer File: E:\Geodata\2016\gSSURGO_FY2016\Hydrologic_Soil_Group_DCD.lyr Created by Steve Peaslee on using script gSSURGO_Mapping.py Also included in the metadata are user-settings or parameters used to create the layer. This example is also from the Hydrologic Soil map. 18 This information can be viewed in ArcCatalog using the Description tab or in ArcMap using the layer Properties/Description field as shown on the next slide. Metadata

19 Metadata The layer properties dialog displays some metadata on the General tab.

The ‘Create gSSURGO DB by Map’ tool can generate a custom gSSURGO database based upon a selected set of survey areas on a map. The primary input will be a folder containing a set of SSURGO datasets, previously downloaded using one of the ‘Download SSURGO’ tools. The number of selected input SSURGO datasets can be 1 – 3,263. Creating a gSSURGO database for the state of Kansas can take 1.0 to 1.5 hours, depending upon hardware speed. 20 ArcTools for SSURGO and gSSURGO data

-gSSURGO- Using the Soil Data Management Toolbox Steve Peaslee USDA-NRCS National Soil Survey Center Lincoln, Nebraska 21