09/01/05 Soil surveys on the web

One of the ag producer's most basic tools is not necessarily mechanical by nature. Since 1899, soil survey reports have been available to the general public. Originally an effort of the federal government, soil surveys have evolved into a federal and state attempt to collect, classify, interpret, and provide soils information. U.S.D.A. Service Centers, Natural Resources Conservation Service field offices, and libraries all across the land have maps, soil interpretations, and information available to help growers decide what crops would grow best where and why. But now soil survey reports have caught up with the digital age. The Director of N.R.C.S.'s National Soil Survey Division, Mike Golden, says for the first time ever, such surveys and information are available on the World Wide Web. GOLDEN: The user can go into a web site and bring up the maps of their area of interest. They can find out about their basic soils and then run some G.I.S. capable functions of soil interpretations that they might be interested in. So how is the information gathered and interpreted with this new format? Golden says the same way it has been for well over a century. GOLDEN: We work with many other people from tax assessment to county planners to city planners to find out the real capable use of their soils. A lot of times there may be limitations out there that one would not know from shallow bedrock or water tables. So you can use the real soil survey to identify a lot of different areas that have problems. And the areas that are good soils for productivity, for growing crops, and also for agricultural uses. Although plans for digitalized soil maps and survey information has been on the drawing board for a decade now, it has taken this long to develop a functional on-line survey report & one that covers sizes from five acres to several hundred. GOLDEN: In future releases, we'll be addressing more agronomic practices with urban interpretations. And also have on where a user might go on and be interested in say a national park, or a whole county, or a watershed for example. And we hope that in the future, this will also soil survey to be utilized than has known about soil survey in the past. On line soil survey reports are available at www.soils.usda.gov/survey.