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Kingston,Mi | N.R.C.S. has been reviewing and rationalizing soil names so that soil mapped in one county and the boundary continues into another are the same description in both counties. The same range of textures, depths and moisture descriptions should result in the same description where ever that particular set of conditions is found. As an example my home county originally mapped a soil that is named and found in Ohio and it is located 100 plus miles from the namesake village. When I started with S.C.S. (now N.R.C.S) we had information sheets called "Soils 5's" for each of the soils being mapped in our county. These Soils 5's gave the location of the soil PEDON where the description was developed by describing the distance from identifiable marks like section corners. Tuscola County Michigan has 44 soil names and was published as a soft back book in 1985, one of the soils is named after Guelph Ontario Canada and represents about 8% of the mapped area. Tuscola County Mi. is about 150 miles west of Guelph Ontario. In the paper printed Soil Surveys, each soil description gave a location of a typical Pedon of the soil.
The Soils 5's were updated periodically for yield estimates. The Web Soil Survey has similar information and is updated as needed ( and yields change)
My first job with S.C.S was as a parttime worker while in college correcting complete soils maps for Antrim, Charlevoix and Emmet Counties (where the south end of the Mackinaw bridge is anchored). The mappers used air photos to draw their soil boundaries on and to write the described soils id. My job was to use a stereoscope to "rationalize." (match from one photo to the next) soil boundaries. The greater portion of the job was to remove soil designations that had become obsolete when the supervisors had decided that the difference between one designation and another was so slight that one description could include both previous descriptions. As an example surface textures that were only slightly different or were found in such small quantities and were distributed within the more frequent texture. I erased the description identifier and the boundary between. Other cases the soil was determined after a substantial amount of the area had been mapped more similar to a slightly different soil and so the identifier had to be changed. | |
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Soil names list
