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Thursday, October 11, 2012

Got soil data? Some notes on ESRI's Online Federal Resources for data

In reacquainting myself with the ESRI suite of products and services, its neat to see how the web and cloud platforms have become the pervasive model for sharing geo-spatial information.

Beginning on the web-page http://esrifederal.maps.arcgis.com , you gain access (with proper login rights) to a scrolling panel of featured federal content:




Browsing quickly, I found one of particular interest for accessing soil data layers.

This map shows the Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service overlayed with a hydro reference layer.




With a click you get access to a more detailed metadata reference:


Description:
This map features the Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) by the United States Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service. It also shows data that was developed by the National Cooperative Soil Survey and supersedes the State Soil Geographic (STATSGO) dataset published in 1994. SSURGO digitizing duplicates the original soil survey maps. This level of mapping is designed for use by landowners, townships, and county natural resource planning and management. The user should be knowledgeable of soils data and their characteristics. The smallest scale map shows the Global Soil Regions map by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The web map combines with the soil survey with the terrain basemap and a hydro overlay layer for reference purposes.  This basemap is ideal for display of thematic data such as the soil survey map, providing a neutral terrain background with an overlay layer for reference purposes.

Access and Use Constraints

Tagssoilssoil surveyUS Department of AgricultureUSDANatural Resources Conservation ServiceNRCSNationalFederalUSA
CreditsSource: USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
Size8 KB
Extent
Left:-141.19Right:-50.31
Top:58.7Bottom:2.59

Finally, using the the Open link, I panned to the Chesapeake region and clicked to pull down the data for my area of interest:



Pretty slick stuff.  Looking forward to exploring the Gallery resources further.

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