Soil Survey by Geographic Area

National Soil Survey Center
Lincoln, Nebraska
First Edition, December 1993

This document is available in Adobe Acrobat format.

Soil Survey by Geographic Area - Major Land Resource Area (9.0 MB)

Preface

The National Soil Survey Center began to consider ways to maintain and improve soil survey maps, soil property records, and soil interpretations in the 1980s. The idea thought to be most promising was the creating of a single data base by modernizing the information for server existing soil survey areas contained within the same geographic area or Major Land Resource Area (MLRA) using one common standard. The theory was that the increasing demand for resource information and the advances in computer technologies heightened a need for a coordinated, joined data base which could be most effectively maintained and utilized by larger geographic areas (MLRAs). The concepts have been will received by the states and others involved in the national cooperative soil survey.

This document is an accumulation of the National Soil Survey Center's (NSSC) guidance and direction given for maintaining information by MLRA. It is intended to provide explanations and examples for many of the processes to be developed by state and project soil survey offices. As you will discover, the MLRA approach encourages the use of modern technologies, such as telecommunication for data transfer; computers for evaluating, reviewing, and editing information; and Geographic Information Systems to project information for areas of known coordinated. Improvements in communication, scale accurate maps, data collection, data evaluation, quality assurance, published formats, and electronic availability of the information will enhance soil survey.