MLRA REGION 10 NEWSLETTER--DECEMBER 1, 1998 THOUSANDS VISIT SOIL PIT The annual farm show called "Wisconsin Farm Progress Days" was held in Dunn County this year near the city of Menomonie. The Wisconsin Society of Professional Soil Scientists sponsor an exhibit at each show which includes a large 20' X 20' walk-thru soil pit (under a 40' x 40' tent) with a variety of soil related displays throughout, soil samples of different parent materials from around the state, the state soil display, a stratigraphic column of the local bedrock, and a number of other visual displays including interpretation maps generated from digitized soil maps. The idea for the soil pit and display was first brought to Wisconsin by Resource Soil Scientist Larry Natzke for the FPD show which was held in Eau Claire County. Many other Wisconsin NRCS soil scientists and WI Dept. of Commerce employees have helped to improve and work on the display each year. It was estimated that on the average 5-10,000 people visit the exhibit each year. This year Miss Wisconsin was seen "down under" in the soil pit! -- Submitted by: Tim Meyer, SSPL, MLRA 105 ######################################################################### SSURGO ON THE WEB SSURGO data is available online, at a SSURGO database data access web page maintained by NRCS. A national status map and a list organized by state detail the scope of available data. There is also an opportunity to download the SSURGO Data Users Guide. Finally, SSURGO spatial and attribute data may be downloaded in ARC/INFO coverage, ARC/INFO export, or DLG3 formats, and the associated metadata is available in ascii. The URL for this page is: http://www.ftw.nrcs.usda.gov/ssur_data.html Submitted by: Mike Walker Sep 29 1998 ######################################################################### CHIEF AND SOILS BRIEFINGS (submitted by Joe McCloskey) On November 4, Chief Pearlie Reed, Soils Division Director Horace Smith, Deputy Chief Maurice Mausbach and many others, both within and outside NRCS, met in St. Paul to give Chief Pearlie Reed a one day briefing of the Soils Program. Overall, the briefings went very well. The Chief is a strong supporter of soil survey. The Chief asked Horace and Maurice to condense the briefings to 30 minutes and give two presentations: the first briefing will be for the Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman; another briefing will be for the Agricultural Appropriations Committee. In closing, Chief Pearlie Reed stated he sees a bright future for the soil survey program. Here are some notes taken from the meeting. Horace Smith - Restructuring, status of the survey program. -- About 95% of private land (including Indian reservations) has been mapped in the U.S. States are being encouraged to update and do so with the MLRA approach. Challenge of doing some areas (mainly west) where ownership is mixed and cost-share is sometimes a barrier. Detail in handouts - Horace showed a US status map, along with tabular and graphed data. -- The Chief wanted to discuss importance of "out-of-date survey" status on map. Discussion of extent of these areas, workload, and availability of staff for accomplishing the task. He asked about the availability of college graduates and stated that we need to be more "liberal" to be competitive and attract desirable new hires -- Bill Hunt asked about outreach to tribal colleges and 1890 institutions. Bylaws of meeting attendance have been changed to enhance involvement of these institutions. Also scholarship programs with several institutions were discussed. -- Horace discussed effort to digitize soil surveys and earmarked funds for SSURGO. Digitized to national standards in 1997 = 60; currently 360+. The seven digitizing centers were discussed. Horace showed a US map showing availability of DOQs. -- Discussion on digital map finishing. Horace is proposing a number of "listening sessions" to be held across the nation. These will be for feedback on user's needs. For example, do we really need all of the layers that we currently publish in our traditional product? -- Diversity in staff work in survey program. Engaged in international programs. -- International importance of Soil Taxonomy. The 'green book' published in 1975 will be published in an updated form for the centennial. Calendar coming out. -- Involved in global change for several years. Involved with other government agencies and with educational institutions. Carbon, phosphorous cycling. May be bringing this down to map unit level for inclusion in FOTG. -- Fixing a value of soil survey information. Study of these economics is in progress. -- Accountability, the new system is moving beyond mapping accomplishments and will capture TSS items -- The Chief pointed out that we have always been held accountable for quality as well as for quantity. -- Bar graphs and tabular data on staff numbers (among handouts in booklet). The Chief asked about range scientist and other discipline's involvement in soil survey program. Some discussion on grade structure, career ladder. -- The Chief also asked for some background on carbon sequestering, phosphorous cycling for help on global change issues -- Information on gender and racial makeup of soil scientist staffing. Significant needs exist. Our numbers of new hires is low. The restructuring for work by MLRA may make the occupation more attractive to women (reduced mobility is demanded by the MLRA approach). -- Discussion on technical soil services. Horace is trying to emphasize that the need for TSS is growing and that staff is needed for this. Budget trends -- fairly level with slight increase. Maurice Mausbach - Deputy Chief's Emphasis -- Soil survey has changed. From horses and shovels to the electronic age. -- MLRA offices are to facilitate continuous soil survey over political boundaries. -- Charles Kellogg said: Viable soil survey needs to have good soil interpretations. Also need to update surveys. -- We need to reach out to partners and to consultants. -- First hundred years of soil survey centered on static properties. We now need to look at the health of the top 25cm. -- New tools: NASIS among these. -- Have a bright future if we keep a scientifically based product. There was a panel discussion from the National Soil Survey Center. The following individuals presented short briefings: Russ Kelsea - NASIS Joyce Scheyer - Urban Soil Survey Interpretations for Recreational Development Dave Lightle - Soil Interpretations Dewayne Mays - Soil Survey Laboratory Gary Muckel - Soil Survey Centennial Adrian Smith - Web Sites and Soils Explorer Arlene Tugel - Soil Quality Institute Activities Tyrone Goddard, State Soil Scientist from New York, gave a presentation of State Office Functions, including: -- Program Planning and Management -- Coordinate with MLRA Regional Offices -- Support for programs -- Soil Survey Maintenance -- Provide input in assessing update needs, secure local funding, tailor design of survey to meet users needs, make MOU, staff -- TSS - Establish a structure for delivery, ensure technical input to special studies and interps, deliver and maintain digital soils data bases, ensure data meets needs of users, support NRCS programs and services, identify technology needs to advance utilization of soils data. -- Marketing - Meet with partners to initiate updates, provide training to users, publicize soil survey in media, carry out TSS, partner to deliver digital data. There were also presentations from Cooperators. Here are some notes taken from their presentations: Jay Bell, University of Minnesota -- Talked about the history of the Ag. Experiment Station, started in 1862. -- Mission - serves a divers society in teaching, research and outreach. -- Cooperation -- Historically there has been much cooperation with NRCS and that framework is still in place. -- Times are changing -- SCS to NRCS, reorganization MLRA vs. State -- MAES funding is different now. Had funding to spend on survey in the past. Jay has no funding to spend directly on soil survey. This is a trend nationwide. -- Priorities (Tenure) Tenure is important and soil survey does not count that much for it. -- Example is the research Jay is doing on digital orthorectification. This is important to the state and was funded by the state. Used these funds to do research. -- Cosponsoring a June 10-12, 1999 conference in Minneapolis on Soil Resources. Tommy Coleman - An 1890 University Perspective -- There are 17 Universities, mostly in the southern part of the country. -- Have demonstrated the capacity to do much with little and train those who may not have had an opportunity. -- These Universities and now prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century. -- Operates under the ARD-coordinates research initiatives among member 1890 Universities and agencies. -- Mission: -- Ensure a safe affordable and ample food and fiber supply -- promote e sustainable environment -- conserve natural resources -- contribute to the improvement of the well being... -- Goal - discussed many goals of the Universities -- Centers of Excellence -- Each one of the 17 are slated to have a center on their campus. -- Some funded with NRCS and many supported from other funding sources -- Decline in student internships in 60's and 70's Tim Gerber (Ohio) -- State Conservation Agency contribution to NCSS -- 828 thousand dollars for soil survey in FY-98 -- 10 million to SWCD's in Ohio -- Have a soil inventory board - Neil Smeck, Jon Gerken and Tim Gerber Donn Smith -- National Society of Consulting Soil Scientists (refer to handout for complete background of the presentation) -- Elected by members, 162 members at this time -- Potential 2500 members in the country Jim Keys US Forest Service -- Major emphasis is with Updating Ecological Unit Inventory -- soils portion needs to meets NCSS requirements -- interdisciplinary, interagency approach -- correlation, QA and reporting needs to be met Greg Larson, Board of Water & Soil Conservation: -- Emphasized that the MLRA concepts have strengthen the soil survey program. -- Emphasized that the cooperators are all working together and this needs to continue. -- MN soil survey update program is very beneficial -- Special thanks to Bill Hunt and Joe McCloskey for providing assistance in the contracted soil surveys. -- The MLRA newsletter is keeping the cooperators informed. -- Technology such as Geographical Information Systems and Global Positioning systems is beneficial to the soil survey program. Jack Briggs - Fond du Lac Tribal and Community -- The Fond du Lac Tribal & Community College is the newest land-grant college -- Thanks to Joe McCloskey and Bill Hunt for their help and leadership in establishing the map compilation unit and Center of Excellence which is employing 8 students. -- Land and rural development housing programs -- The school needs to have an infrastructure that will focus on scientific capabilities (school is 11 years old). -- There is a need to keep graduates of the school in the area. Currently have $50,000 for grants to created an environment program. -- Currently working on a watershed project. An MOU has be set up to complete the study. There are 22 high schools that are involved. Each high school has gathered data and it will be summarized. -- We need to find a way to develop jobs in soils or related fields. -- Currently working on a research grant to study soil-plant relationships in wild rice. ######################################################################### TWO DATABASE UPDATES FROM MLRA REGION 11 (Indianapolis, Indiana) 1. FILE NEW FILE EXIT NOT! X It is very important to properly exit from NASIS 4.0. DO NOT close your X window with the X in the right hand corner of the screen. This may leave a hanging session and cause any data that you have loaded to remain locked and protected. 2. INFORMIX is reset every Sunday when the HP reboots and all locks will be cleaned up at that time. If you do have an emergency you can call 317-290-3200 ex 377 or 371 and we will try to clean up any hanging processes which may also unlock your NASIS data. Remember clean_edit -d nasis will fix many lock problems 3. A note from Terry Aho Bad news. There currently is no way to copy a DMU from another NASIS site from the central server and paste it into your site without losing all plant symbol links in the component tables. The only solution is to print plant reports for the DMU's and then re-enter the plant information after copy/paste. 4. The good news is that you can copy all the data except for the plant information from one NASIS site to another using the central server. This is done using the command "nasisclient" on an MLRA machine to start a nasisclient session with AMES. [If you type nasisclient instead of nasis or nasistutor, you then access the national NASIS database currently housed in Ames, Iowa; all data at this site is read only.--Editor] 5. Other good news. If your state has been split into 2, 3, or 4 pieces, you can run state reports using nasisclient. 6. NO FILE IS SACRED!! This is just a reminder that the HP9000 is a NASIS database machine. You can run reports and even store them for a short time. But at anytime, I will remove any an all core dumps, focs downloads, ssurgo downloads, reports, or any other user files from the system. Generally, I will look at the date before I do so, To Date, I have not removed any user files with the exception of core dumps. All downloads, reports, and other user files should be ftp'd back to your local machine for storage or printing. 7. THEY ARE COMING! Tammy does have some scripts which she will be testing for remote printing to WIN-95 and NT machines. As soon as they are tested and released, I will notify project offices. 8. Slowly but surely, we are cleaning up our plants database. Currently there are still many duplicates which makes editing windbreak tables and woodland tables a pain. As we narrow down the plants list the editing will become easier and easier for our users. 9. Thanks in advance. Many of you are already loading only select objects while editing. This is very helpful when legends are linked to more and more data mapunits. By only loading the legends and not the data mapunits, you free up the datamap units for global edits such as the plants table clean-up. 10. The Soil Data Quality Specialists are planning to start developing "MLRA Office-11 Technical Notes". These technical notes will provide guidance and clarification on the Soil Survey Manual, Taxonomy, and field correlation issues. From: Henry Ferguson September 21, 1998 ************* Database update from MLRA-11 1. NASIS 4.0 online as of September 2nd 2. Indianapolis line to the Internet upgraded from 56K to 256K, mid August 3. Regional legend on hold (General concensus that it is too early to assemble the Reginal Legend) 4. Illinois and Indiana State legends under construction using two completely different methods of construction. To view the Indiana legend load it as a nonproject legend. 5. MLRA 108 legend has been developed by MLRA-10 Regional office on the in9000(Indy). It can be loaded using *iowa* and status of update. 6. The National woodland report as been rewritten to use the forest productivity table and is available as an MLRA-11 local report. 7. A MUG test report has been constructed and can be loaded using *under construction* if you wish to view the contents. To test it load any county completely and run the report or load *test* as a nonproject legend to use a small test legend. 8. On-site reviews of all NASIS sites in the region will take place in the next 3 months. If you are satisfied with the performance of NASIS at your site, I can perform the evaluation over the phone. If you are unsure, or want an on-site review please call me at 317-290-3200 ex 377 to schedule a visit. A. Example: I evaluated two computers in the North Vernon Project Office. Both were purchased at the same time and had identical hardware configurations. Both computers were LAN-WAN=92ed. The Results:: Computer #1. NASIS session to Indianapolis Indiana (Reasonably acceptable) Computer #1. NASIS session to West Virginia (Not acceptable for editing but OK for reports) Computer #2. All NASIS sessions were unacceptable for both editing and report viewing) Conclusion:: The Regional staff will make all edits to the WV database for Perry County, Indiana. Future edits to the WV database will be made by the North Vernon Staff once West Virginia upgrades from a 56K line to a 256K line. All updates to Clark-Floyd counties, Indiana will be made by the Project office in North Vernon. The North Vernon Office is scheduled to have one of its two computers switched out. As a result of the on-site evaluation, the second computer has been targeted for replacement. 9. REQUEST to all states. Please load your data using one of the K factor queries (all surface horizons H1). Globally change the representative designation for the surface texture from no to yes. OR Reply to the MO office and ask us to perform the global edit for you and we will edit the entire 6 state region. RESULT - This edit is required for the MUG shells or the cropland and pastureland limitation report shells to run properly. 10. TRAINING A. Formal Training Tentatively Scheduled for February 1-5, 1999 Place: Indianapolis, MLRA office Two concurrent sessions Feb 1-4 Introduction to NASIS 4.0 (New Trainees) Indiana - 2 to 4 participants Ohio - 2 to 4 participants Illinois - 2 to 4 participants Michigan - 2 to 4 participants Maximum class size 16 Feb 3-5 Advanced NASIS 4.0 (1-2 participants per state) Edit setup Reports and Interps training Maximum class size 10 to 12 11. TRAINING Illinois has authorized its soil scientists to spend 3 days each in the MLRA-11 Regional office for on-the-job training. It is important to spend one or two weeks preparing for this training by preparing tables to be input into NASIS. Be sure to call our office for helpful hints. Examples: assign duration to rarely flooded units assign duration to ponded units assign a lower depth to perched water tables have soils assigned to groups for editing the forestry and windbreak tables get clearance for performing any edits in data map units that you do not own This includes clearence for published data or update data. (There are some edits that you may not be given permission to make. RESULT - new datamap units will have to be created. Michigan and Ohio are encouraged to provide similar training at the state office, or to allow soil scientists to receive training here in Indianapolis as well. 12. On-site training Upon request, I will travel to any office in the Region for a two day training session in NASIS. 13. MLRA Region 10 and 11 SDQS are developing guidelines for NASIS 4.0 text notes. This will allow soil scientists to capture and generate documentation of correlation activities for SSURGO and update soil survey activities in NASIS. From: Henry Ferguson September 28, 1998 ######################################################################### ADDRESS, OFFICE, AND PHONE NUMBER CHANGES 1. Glenn Borchers has a new email address: glenn.borchers@ne.usda.gov 2. Craig Ditzler, MLRA Region 14 Team Leader, has accepted a new assignment as Director of the Soil Quality Institute, effective Nov. 22. 3. Lee Camp's new email address: Lee.Camp@ia.nrcs.usda.gov ######################################################################### WEB SITES OF INTEREST http://www.mn.nrcs.usda.gov/mo10/modir98.txt MLRA Region 10 personnel directory. ######################################################################### CORRECTION In the November 1, 1998 newsletter, x3780.405frig should be x3780.406frig (it was sent twice). ######################################################################### ACTIVITY SCHEDULE (through January 15--subject to change) MLRA DATE ACTIVITY LOCATION MO 10 STAFF ---- --------- ---------------------------- ----------------- ----------- 90 Dec 01-04 Office Visit Rhinelander/ Keshena Jahnke 90 Dec 07-09 NASIS/Correlation Mille Lacs County Giencke 90 Dec 10-11 NASIS Brooklyn Center Giencke 94B Dec 14-16 MLRA Steering Committee Mtg Munising Jahnke DesLauriers Handler 102A Dec 07-11 NASIS Introductory Training Marshall DesLauriers 102A Jan 04-08 MLRA Steering Committee Mtg Brookings DesLauriers Giencke 103 Jan 04-08 Map Compilation Training St. Peter Walker 104 Jan 11-15 MLRA Steering Committee Mtg Decorah Hempel Giencke Handler 105 Dec 07-11 Final Field Review La Crosse Jahnke 105 Jan 05-06 MLRA Steering Committee Mtg Eau Claire Jahnke Hander 105 Jan 11-15 NASIS-T. Meyer & Simonson St. Paul Jahnke all Dec 07-11 NASIS Soil Survey Schedule Ft Worth McCloskey Handler ######################################################################### CONTRIBUTIONS, IDEAS, SUGGESTIONS, AND QUESTIONS ARE WELCOME Thanks to those individuals who participated this month. It is your efforts that are making this newsletter a success. * * * * * Please submit your articles at least five days before the end of the month for inclusion in the following month's newsletter. Otherwise it will appear the following month. Occasionally, due to other workload demands, it may be an additional month before the article appears. Generally, articles are inserted in the order they are received. Articles in an electronic format can be submitted to: jfh@mn.nrcs.usda.gov It is best if electronic articles are prepared in a "text only" format. Articles in a paper format can be sent or faxed to: John Handler MLRA Region 10 Office USDA - NRCS 375 Jackson Street - Suite 600 St. Paul, Minnesota 55101-1854 FAX: 1-651-602-7914 * * * * * This newsletter is intended to be a forum to distribute information of a general nature that will benefit soil scientists in soil survey project offices. It is hoped that it will foster communications and sharing of knowledge among those soil scientists in MLRA Region 10. * * * * * The format of this newsletter is intentionally simple so that it can be received, read, and printed by the project office having the least sophisticated computer setup. #########################################################################