Soil Landscapes of the United States (SOLUS) - Mapping Soil Parent Material Terms for Educators

Organized USDA – Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) parent material kind terms into five hierarchical tiers (called SOLUS PM tiers 1-5) to reduce complexity

Linked five SOLUS PM tiers to gSSURGO map unit components via 119 unique pmkind attributes Assigned default values of “1” to parent material order when NULL to extend usefulness of SSURGO source Assembled map unit majority parent material order and kind based on representative component percentage Mapped SOLUS tier 1 result using gSSURGO MapUnitRaster_30m map layer for Conterminous US (CONUS) Fig. 1

Compare resulting map layer using Major Land Resource Areas (2006) geographic concepts Evaluate flexible 5th SOLUS tier for meeting local educator needs (derived using Isee+ parent material legend key) Link SOLUS tiers 1-5 to Isee+ Web Mercator Tile Levels (web service cache layers) to geospatially contextualize parent

material concepts Test and evaluate SOLUS parent material hierarchy as web map services in Isee+ research project Review and update existing SSURGO parent material geographic and attribute concepts

Reliable and readily accessible soil geographic information is critical for the estimation of many ecosystem services. For example, the ability of the soil to store precipitation and release water to plants can diminish or amplify the impact of agricultural drought events.

Such assessments of ecosystem services, analysis and modeling are being conducted over large regions the United States, North America, and the Globe. These assessments require complete, consistent, correct, and comprehensive soils information.

Soil parent material kinds and origins when mapped in the landscape have been found to be a very effective educational tool to teach how soils influence ecosystem services. The National Cooperative Soil Survey is currently reevaluating legacy soil geographic databases and investing in new digital soil mapping methods and products to better estimate soil ecosystem services.

In this study, legacy soil parent material kinds and origin were queried and mapped for the Conterminous United States using 2014 gridded soil survey geographic database (gSSURGO -10m resolution) with the intent of providing a map layer that is suitable to teaching college students about soil landscapes at various Google cache resolutions.

This effort was found to benefit from a scalable hierarchy of parent material terms linking existing and new soil geographic knowledge. Soil Landscapes of the United States (SOLUS) is envisioned as a national, scalable system of organizing digital soil geographic knowledge by partitioning soil parent material and soil climate variation into broad regions.

Each region is further partitioned by nested, smaller regions sharing patterns of soil forming factors in space and time.

Methods for extracting soil parent material kind and origin from gSSURGO and the Official Soil Series record are presented along with resulting SOLUS-Parent Material map layer and legend draft and review strategy.

Sharon W. Waltman1, Philip Schoeneberger2, Douglas A. Wysocki2, James A. Thompson3, and Darrell G. Schulze4

1 USDA-NRCS, NSSC - Geospatial Research Unit, Morgantown, WV, 2 USDA-NRCS, National Soil Survey Center (NSSC), Lincoln, NE, 3West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 4 Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

Soil parent material kinds and origins when mapped in the landscape have been found to be a very effective educational tool to teach how soils influence ecosystem services. The National Cooperative Soil Survey is currently reevaluating legacy soil geographic databases and investing in new digital soil mapping methods and products to better estimate soil ecosystem services. M, In this study, legacy soil parent material kinds and origin were queried and mapped for the Conterminous United States using 2014 gridded soil survey geographic database (gSSURGO -10m resolution) with the intent of providing a map layer that is suitable to teaching college students about soil landscapes at various Google cache resolutions. This effort was found to benefit from a scalable hierarchy of parent material terms linking existing and new soil geographic knowledge. Soil Landscapes of the United States (SOLUS) is envisioned as a national, scalable system of organizing digital soil geographic knowledge

Method

0 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19

Web Mercator Tile Levels (0-19) SOLUS PM Tiers

(1-5)

1 2

3 4

5

Figure 3. Parent Material Groupings in Field Guide for Describing Soils plus SSURGO and gSSURGO MapUnitRaster_30m map layer used as starting point for SOLUS Parent Material Tier (Shoeneberger et al. 2012) Development. Example given for Glacial & Periglacial Deposits (SOLUS tier 1), Till (SOLUS tier 2), Ablation Till (SOLUS tier 3), and Clayey Wisconsin Till (SOLUS tier 5). Note SOLUS tier 4 is not used in this case.

SSURGO DataBase

pmkind pmorder

Results

Figure 4. Web Mercator tile levels (0-19) associated with SOLUS parent material tier levels (1-6). SOLUS tier 1 = tile level 8 (1:4,622,324 map scale), SOLUS tier 2 = tile level 9 (1:2,311,162 map scale, SOLUS tier 3 = tile level 11 (1:288,895 map scale), SOLUS tier 4 = tile level 14 (1:36,112 map scale), and SOLUS tier 5 = tile level 5 (1:18,056). Web Mercator tile caching enables fast viewing of multiple resolution map layers via web map services.

Isee+

Soil Parent Materials SOLUS tier 1

Volcanic Deposits (unconsolidated;

eolian and mass movement)

Organic Deposits

Miscellaneous Deposits

Mass Movement Deposits

In-Place Deposits (nontransported)

Glacial and Periglacial Deposits

Eolian Deposits (nonvolcanic)

Anthropogenic Deposits

Waterlaid (or Transported) Deposits

Figure 6. Students use Isee+ on mobile device to learn about soil landscape systems starting with soil parent material concepts.

Figure 1. Soil Landscapes of the US (SOLUS) Parent Material Tier 1 Groupings with Major Land Resource Area regions for the Conterminous United States (CONUS). Nine categories are mapped that describe parent material kind. Tan colors indicate eolian deposits; dark blue colors indicate glacial and peri- glacial deposits; orange colors indicate in place or in situ deposits; dark green colors indicate mass wasting deposits; white colors indicate miscellaneous deposits; dark brown colors indicate organic deposits; purple colors indicate volcanic deposits; light blue colors indicate waterlaid or transported deposits, and black colors indicate anthropogenic deposits (mine spoils, urban areas, etc.). SOLUS tier 1 groups are mapped using FY2014 gSSURGO (USDA-NRCS, 2014) and MLRAs (USDA-NRCS, 2006).

Figure 5. Hand drawn legacy 3-D soil landscape block diagrams were used to communicate soil parent material and land form concepts. These concepts need to be updated and transferred to digital soil databases.

Next Steps

Field Book PM Groups

Acknowledgements This material is based upon work supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Award No. 2013-70003-20924.

Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

References United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. 2006. Land Resource Regions and Major Land Resource Areas of the United States, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Basin. U.S. Department of Agriculture Handbook 296.

Soil Survey Staff. Gridded Soil Survey Geographic (gSSURGO) Database for the Conterminous United States. United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. Available online at http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/. January 15, 2014 (FY2014 official release).

Schoeneberger, P.J., D.A. Wysocki, E.C. Benham, and Soil Survey Staff. 2012. Field book for describing and sampling soils, Version 3.0. Natural Resources Conservation Service, National Soil Survey Center, Lincoln, NE.