SAES-422 Multistate Research Activity Accomplishments Report
Sections
Status: Approved
Basic Information
- Project No. and Title: NCERA3 : Soil and Landscape Assessment, Function and Interpretation
- Period Covered: 10/04/2021 to 07/14/2023
- Date of Report: 10/04/2023
- Annual Meeting Dates: 07/09/2023 to 07/13/2023
Participants
Accomplishments
Accomplishments
- All participants in the project are active contributors to the National Cooperative Soil Survey as participants on various national and regional committees, as contributors to soil survey activities in their respective states and as educators training the next generation of soil scientists.
- Despite significant challenges to education in 2020 due to COVID-19, participants generated innovative approaches to content delivery. These initiatives are continuing and being refined resulting in a growing body of instructional materials that are being shared within and beyond the North Central Region.
- All of the individuals involved with this project are contributors to the Soil Explorer project and have finalized, or are in the process of finalizing, Dominant Soil Parent Material maps for their respective states. These maps are available to anyone anywhere via a web browser (SoilExplorer.net) or via apps for iOS and Android devices. Support for the parent material maps was provided by a project titled, Completion of the Isee Soils Database for the North Central Region, funded by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. In addition, a new project titled, Leveraging Soil Explorer for Soils and Ecological Training, funded by the Natural Resources Conservation Service ($52,295, 8/28/2019 – 8/31/2021), was awarded to Purdue University to expand the maps available on Soil Explorer. This project is utilizing the entire US Soil Survey database (the SSURGO database) to produce maps for the entire area covered by the US Cooperative Soil Survey, which includes the conterminous U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and the Pacific island territories.
Eight data layers for Soil Explorer were updated or created new in 2022 for the conterminous US, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Pacific Island territories. These layers are Soil Orders, Natural Soil Drainage Classes, Dark-Colored Surface Horizons, Clay-Enriched Subsoils, Leached Acid Soils, Calcic Horizons, Swelling Soils, and Soil Map Units. In addition, the states of Alaska and Hawaii were newly added to Soil Explorer in 2022.
Work continues on refining Soil Explorer including addition of an ‘Aquic conditions’ layer that includes an active overlay for other thematic maps, as well as improving functionality of the web site application on smart phones.
Committee members are actively involved in soil judging at the high school and collegiate level. These activities serve as valuable outreach/educational initiatives for fostering the next generation of soil scientists. The Ohio State University (Brian Slater, organizer) hosted the National Collegiate Soil Judging Contest in April 2022, in central Ohio. Contest had been postponed in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID restrictions. Teams from 21 colleges from all 7 NCSJ regions attended (more than 150 students and 30 coaches). Contest was strongly supported by soil scientists from NRCS and Ohio Department of Agriculture.
Committee members contributed to following scholarly article on soil judging.
Young, R.A., Turk, J. Jekinski, N.A., Anderson, A.D., Clark, K.M., Deere, A.L., Mooberg, C.J., Osterloh, K., and Pressley, D. Jumble judging: Cognitive and affective outcomes of intercollegiate collaboration at a soil judging competition (2023). Agronomy & Horticulture – Faculty Publications. 1702. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/agonomyfacpub/1702
Impacts
- 1. Project participants are actively publishing their research work in the scientific literature as indicate in the publications section.
- 2. The SoilExplorer.net website and Soil Explorer app continue to be downloaded and utilized by thousands of people each year. The content on these apps was a collaborative effort of NCERA-3 members, led by Purdue University (Darrell Schulze, PI). The SoilExplorer.net website had 8.1 K users (~22 per day) and 13 K sessions between 1/1/22 and 12/31/22, a significant increase over 2021 according to Google Analytics. The Soil Explorer app for iPhone/iPad was downloaded by 1,714 Apple IDs between 1/1/22 - 12/31/22, an average of 4.7 downloads per day.
- 3. Project participants are actively involved in soil survey activities in conjunction with soil scientists from USDA-NRCS. This involvement includes research and consultation work in conjunction with soil survey activities in member states. This includes novel work on digital soil mapping techniques (Purdue, Minnesota, Iowa State, Ohio State), monitoring and benchmarking of soil carbon and soil moisture regimes (Kansas State, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Minnesota), collaborative development of Ecological Site Descriptions (Kansas State), development and refinement of novel soil survey interpretations (Iowa State), and novel tools to digitally visualize soil profiles and soil morphology from descriptive text data (Purdue). Urban soil mapping, East St. Louis, and Chicago (Illinois).