Progress Review this week

Ah the life of a soil scientist. The review thing. This one is different than most, since we did the field portion last fall and this week will be slogging around in the database, checking mapunit design and composition, NASIS data, and all our mapping to date on the GIS. Soil survey has changed a lot since I started this job back in the 70's. I would write a soil series from a handwritten description by hand, would send it off to a distant office to be typed, and to another distant office to be checked against existing soil series. Maybe in 6 months we would get it back, approved and edited. Now we do all that ourselves, from descriptions that are entered in NASIS and out pops a series description that we edit and check on the internet for other series that may be the same. Our database used to be generated from a thing called a SOI 5, a 2 page form that we also filled out by hand and that was sent off to another computer somewhere to create soils tables. That's all done in NASIS now, National Soil Information System, which pops out reports by the hundreds and you just have to find the ones you want. Sounds easy, right? ha! Consistency is still and always the issue. The more data you generate the more it all has to match. Hence progress reviews in the office.

That's what I will be doing all week this week, in addition to keeping my two visiting soil scientists busy, and making sure that the review team leader from the state office is satisfied with the quality of the work. As usual, quality and quantity are the needs, both at once, and for less money and less time and more and more information generated and used. Just for fun, check out the final product here: http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/ and here
http://www.soils.usda.gov/