Web Soil Survey

Although the depth of my knowledge of soil science is limited, tooling around with the USDA's Web Soil Survey program was very engaging. I was blown away by the seemingly endless trove of data available to the public as well as the ease with which a novice like myself was able to navigate the different tools. Granted, the video tutorial helped me out a lot but I was still impressed with myself that I was able to follow along as well as I did. However, despite spending a whole afternoon messing around with the web tool I was still a little overwhelmed by it due to my lack of a goal (besides familiarizing myself with its functions). My next step will be to brush up on my soil ecology knowledge and come up with some questions about my study area that I can answer using the Web Soil Survey Tool.

That being said, I did follow some of the examples given by the tutorial and picked some data sets of potential interest to investigate. The tables and maps I have included might prove to be unimportant to my study area but I wanted to outline some basic features of the web tool so I could have a starting point for when I return with more direction.

Below you'll find some .pdfs of data tables I pulled from my study area of Richmond, Virginia as well as a Google Doc with notes/screenshots from the tutorial to make it easier to find information on what exactly we're looking at. 

Screenshot of a thematic map I made of White Oak forest productivity (also included a .pdf of it)

Soil survey of my neighborhood (Fulton Hill)

Maps, Tables, and Notes: 

• City of Richmond Soil Map
• Forestland Productivity Table
  
• Forest Productivity - White Oak - Thematic Map
• Yields of Non-Irrigated Crops 
•  My AOI didn’t have the different crop options like in the tutorial. The only available crop was “pasture”
• Tutorial Notes