1. Soil Information

2. Soil mapping is problematic:
Issues of scale
Level of generalization

6. County Soil Surveys Paper copy available from County NRCS office
For counties that have been surveyed
Free to public
PDF file at NRCS website

7. Other useful links Soil series descriptions MN NRCS site
Official Series Descriptions :OSDs
MN NRCS site

8. Digital Soil data Extends useful life of soil reports :
Easily updated
Tailored to future needs
Spatially referenced
GIS-compatible format
Geographic Information Systems
Hardware/software for spatial analysis
SSURGO
STATSGO

9. SSURGO Soil Survey Geographic database More detail than STATSGO
“SSURGO-certified”
National cartographic standards
More detail than STATSGO
1:12000 to 1:63,360
Landowners and county-level planning
Not directly readable from Internet
need GIS or other interface

10. STATSGO State Soil Geographic database More generalized than SSURGO
1;250,000
For land use planning over large areas
Not directly readable from Internet
For use with GIS or other interface

11. Soil mapping is problematic:
Issues of scale
Level of generalization

15. Soil Survey
Soil surveys describe kinds of soils that exist in an area.
Soils are described in terms of their :
location on the landscape
profile characteristics
relationships to one another
suitability for various uses
needs for particular types of management
Soils are grouped into MAP UNITS

16. Soil map units are the basic unit of a soil Map.
Collection of areas defined and named the same in terms of their soil components (e.g., series) (or miscellaneous areas or both)
Fallsington sandy loam, 0 to 2% slopes
Marr-Dodon complex, 2 to 5% slopes
Soil map units are the basic unit of a soil
Map.
Each soil map unit differs in some respect from all others in a survey area.

17. Hierarchical categories
Order
Suborder
Great group
Subgroup
Family
Series
Alfisol
Udalfs
Hapludalfs
Typic hapludalfs
Fine,loamy,mixed,superactive,frigid
Nebish
Fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, frigid Typic Hapludalfs

18. Each map unit
has a unique symbol (numbers or letters) on the soil map, for example:
FaA
MnB
“Mono-taxa” units are dominated by a single soil type •
“Multi-taxa” units include two or more main soil types