Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Introductions and Agency Reports Meeting was called to order by Mickey Ransom at 1:05P.M. on June 3, 2007. Location: Lowell Hall Lower Lounge, 610 Langdon Street, Madison, WI Minutes from 2006 meeting were approved as distributed. Administrative Advisor's Report (Gerald Miller) Jerry circulated a membership list and requested members to update email addresses and telephone numbers if needed. He discussed budget proposals. Create-21 would include Extension, Teaching and Research. CSREES and ARS program may be combined. NIMSS official committee list is missing a few names. Need to have possible committee members not listed file an appendix E (MO and IA). Mid-term review was approved by NCA-1 and NCRA MRC. Federal budget update was given including changes in Hatch funding level. FY07 continuing resolution eliminated earmarks but gave them back in Hatch. Total $322 million for Hatch. National Institute of Food and Agriculture - modeled after NSF and NIH. Mandatory Farm Bill funding. Concern about how Extension fits in. NCERA-3 is authorized from 10/01/2004 until 9/30/2009. Will need to assign a writing committee at the next committee meeting in 2008 to prepare a project renewal proposal that is due by December 15, 2008. USDA - NRCS NSSC Report (Bob Ahrens) Discussed implementation of MLRA Project Office organization: Not much money for moves. Varies from state to state. New version of Web Soil Survey is available (Version 2.0). Shopping cart feature for doing a custom soil survey report. PLS data layer - can get section. Can get Federal Land boundaries. Corrected the shift on area of interest. Will have a demo this week. Personnel changes: Chris Smith - new National Leader for Technical Soil Services. Position moved from Lincoln to Washington, DC. Jon Gerken - soil scientist position in Washington, DC. David Hammer - National Soil Survey Leader for Soil Survey Investigations is moving to EPA effective 7/22/07. Looking to fill a research soil scientist position in National Soil Survey Laboratory. 15 people at National Soil Survey Center are eligible for retirement. Characterization data output time has improved No set aside money for earmarks this year. Asked for proposals in case money is allocated at the end. Big challenge in losing experience and knowledge with retirements. USDA - NRCS NCSS National Headquarters - Maxine Levin Jon Gerken will be working with day to day management of soil survey. Will work with the MLRA restructuring plan. Chris Smith will be looking at new applications for soil survey. 5-year investment plan - decision support for the soil survey program. 155 people registered for this conference - more than 50% from outside of NRCS. Federal Land Mapping GS-13 position as National Park Service data manager with Cooperative Soil Survey - two year term that could be renewed for up to 4 years. Forest Service and BLM may develop similar positions. Old Business Standing committees: Effects of Management of Soils Committee - Ken Olson The committee has been very active. Neil Smeck presented a proposal for classification of soils modified by human activities at the NC Soil Survey Conference in Medora, ND and at the WCSS. Neil Smeck presented his proposal to differentiate steady state and dynamic soil properties in Soil Taxonomy at the 18th World Congress Soil Science Symposium in Philadelphia, PA. (Abstracts, p.137). The proposal was well received but not fully understood. Craig Ditzler sent out a copy of Neil's proposal to all of the MO Leaders in NRCS. Neil has been given a 1 hour session at 1 p.m. on Wednesday at the NCSSC to discuss the proposal. NRCS has indicated that they will not accept the term "anthropogenic deviant." Will probably use "anthropogenic variant." Education and Training Committee - Terry Cooper A one-page report was distributed of a survey that we conducted. Lots of programs are training students in soils that have environmental science or conservation in the title. Very few have soil science as the name. Numbers are all over the place as to whether programs are going up or down. Numbers of actual soil science graduates are 3, 5, 10, and 12. No new surprises in the survey results. It is still not too late to turn in the surveys to Terry. Much discussion about declining enrollments despite increases in the enrollment in general interest low-level soil science courses. North Dakota State Soil Science Department will be renamed the School of Natural Resources Science. Received responses from Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Survey was conducted of the North Central universities who train soils students. Many universities are combining soils training under a broader program area with subsections related to soils courses. High Intensity Soil survey Committee - Phillip Owens Sponsored a symposium at SSSA meetings in 2006 in Indianapolis in cooperation with the National Consulting Soil Scientists. Symposium included 15 posters and 10 presentations and a 15 minute panel discussion. Consultants presented papers. Will try to develop some sort of publication dealing with high intensity soil surveys. Soil Research and Interpretations committee - Cindy Stiles Will focus on what soil survey research activities are occurring in the various Departments. She served on an NCSS Committee on research priorities. Discussion included questions about what direction we should go. Soil survey program often comes up with questions that need immediate answers. As researchers we often can not come up with the answers without doing extensive research. Will try to do the survey at the national level and will attempt to determine research problems that need to be worked on. Need to identify areas earlier so that problems can be the focus of graduate research efforts and need to state problems. Regional soil Map Cindy Stiles and Lee Burras will attempt to obtain the information from Tom Fenton and put it into a database which is accessible by others. More work needs to be done. National Advisory Board/committees - National Soil Survey Database: Ken Olson is serving as committee member and has been interacting with the National Soil Survey Laboratory to resolve how to identify methods used by each state for each laboratory analyses over time. Attempt will be made by NSSL to acquired state laboratory data and field soil descriptions and identify the methods used to analyze the soil samples. Funds for this project have been awarded to Idaho State University, to hold the funds, while contracts for service or agreements are made with 9 other university laboratories to upload the soil characterization data and soil descriptions into NASIS. The soil descriptions will be entered into pedon_pc v.3.0 which uses MS Access database. NRCS is attempting to select and transfer start up money to initiate the project which is currently being supervised by Dr. David Hammer. National Soil Taxonomy committee- Ken Olson (IL) will serve for one more year (2007), Lee Burras (IA) will serve a 2 year term (2007, 2008) and Mark Kuzila (NE) will serve a 3 year term (2007, 2008, and 2009). Ken Olson (IL) should be replaced in 2008 by a member from current east region (MI, OH, or IN). National Soil Survey Conference Subcommittee: NCSS National Conference Steering Committee members (2007) are David Hopkins and Mickey Ransom. NCSS National Conference Steering Committee (2009) Mickey Ransom and Brian Slater. Scheduled to be in the west region in 2009. National Cooperative Soil Survey Group to Director of Soil Survey Operations  Mickey Ransom and Cindy Stiles. New Business Update of Impact Statement at NIMSS website. A subcommittee of Mickey Ransom, Del Mokma, Ken Olson and Dave Hopkins developed and edited a Soil Survey (NCERA-3) Impact nugget. This document was reviewed by the entire NCERA-3 committee and will be discussed again by the full committee at our next session on (6/6/2007) with plans to have it posted to web by September 2007. Mickey Ransom was assigned and accepted that task. Discussion of midterm review from NCRA Multistate Research Committee The following statement by the MRC that the NCERA-3 "committee should begin to consider a future where it more fully integrates its activities with emerging technologies and applications" was discussed. The committee initially thought that is what it was doing but perhaps it needs to be more clearly documented. A committee name change and shift in activity might be appropriate in the next revised proposal to more fully describe its use of emerging technologies and applications. Cindy Stiles made a motion that we adjourn for the day. Phillip Owens 2nd it and motion passed. Meeting adjourned at 4:45P.M. on Sunday, June 3, 2007 Meeting Reconvened at Pyle Center Room 111 at 3:30 P.M. on Wednesday, June 6, 2007. Mike Konen joined the meeting. Discussion continued related to the NCRA MRC review and the future of NCERA-3. Dave Hopkins made a motion that we send in any revisions to the impact state prior to posting on web. These changes should be submitted by August 15, 2007. The committee name change will be addressed in the next proposal committee renewal. A writing committee to prepare a draft project renewal proposal was formed. The committee is composed of Del Mokma, Ken Olson, Dave Hopkins and Phillip Owens. The committee was charged to prepare a draft proposal by the 2008 NCERA-3 meeting. The proposal is due December 15, 2008. Committee accomplishments: High Intensity soils symposium at SSSA in 2006 Human impact on soil proposal (Smeck proposal) Participation on standing committees at the National Soil Survey Conference, Madison, WI Paper presented on Human impact on soil at 18th World Congress of Soil Science Conducted educational survey of NC university related to training of soil scientist. Helped revise the Sharkey report Published a paper in Soil Survey Horizons 47:61-64, titled "Contributions of North Central Regional Committee 3 to Regional and National Cooperative Soil Survey Programs" Committee impacts Invited presentation on classification of human impacted soils Other items Cindy Stiles reported on the Research committee work and asked that existing state soil characterization laboratory directors form a committee to work on soil sample exchange and testing. Committee will be chaired by Cindy Stiles with Mickey Ransom and Randy Miles as committee members. There is a chance Ohio State University laboratory might participate. Other states will be asked to nominate soils and collect soil samples for testing. Cindy also indicate the need to collect more soil carbon related information and perhaps use newer methods such as liter bags, micro plates and other procedures. It was not clear how much of the research could be related to NCERA-3. Might overlap with other regional committees working on soil carbon sequestration or soil organic matter. Characterizing the soil carbon content clearly fits with NCERA-3 objectives. Cindy also discussed water table studies both past and present and an upcoming Water table workshop related to monitoring climate change. Cindy Stiles and Lee Burras will work to get regional soil map on an interactive format so that an urban expansion map and a productive farmlands map can be overlain and distributed. Phillip Owen will work with SSSA and serve as a liaison with Congressional staff to help bring attention to soil survey and soil laboratory issues and needs. State reports: Electronic copies should be sent to Ken Olson by June 30, 2007. David Hopkins will be secretary for the 2008 NCERA-3 meeting. That meeting will be a joint meeting with the North Central Soil Survey conference which will start at 1:00P.M. on the day before the conference which is scheduled for June 24, 2008 and ending on June 26, 2009 in Manhattan, KS. At this time it is not clear whether the Conference field trip will be during the conference or on the Monday before (June 23rd). If it is then the NCERA-3 meeting would be on Sunday June 22, 2008 with a follow-up meeting on Wednesday June 25, 2008. Phillip Owens was elected as secretary-elect for the 2009 NCERA-3 meeting. If invited we might meet with the NCSSC in 2009 which is scheduled to be in the west region. The incoming FY08 Executive Committee members are: Mickey Ransom - Past Chair Del Mokma - Chair Ken Olson - Chair-elect David Hopkins - Secretary The individual state reports are attached. Submitted by K.R. Olson, 2007 NCERA-3 Secretary Approved: Mickey Ransom, Chair July 31, 2007 Approved: Gerald A. Miller, Administrative Advisor July 31, 2007

High Intensity soils symposium at SSSA in 2006 Human impact on soil proposal (Smeck proposal) Participation on standing committees at the National Soil Survey Conference, Madison, WI Paper presented on Human impact on soil at 18th World Congress of Soil Science Conducted educational survey of NC university related to training of soil scientist. Helped revise the Sharkey report Published a paper in Soil Survey Horizons 47:61-64, titled Contributions of North Central Regional Committee 3 to Regional and National Cooperative Soil Survey Programs

See Publications in State Reports in Meeting Minutes.