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Washington State in Top Five of National Soil Survey Request

Submitted by Brad Duncan, Assistant State Soil Scientist

The demand for Washington State soils information, especially in the Puget Sound, has risen dramatically since the introduction of the Web Soil Survey. Requests from the Web Soil Survey for soils information from three Washington State Soil Survey Areas are consistently in the top 10 nationally. Interest in data for King County (WA633), Snohomish County (WA661), and Pierce County (WA653)for July alone placed them in the top five (see Table 1).

Table 1.

This application matrix was developed by NRCS in Fort Collins, Colorado by monitoring the use of the Web Soil Survey site. In fact, Washington State leads the nation in total number of request for the month of July if you add the request from the three SSA’s together. (see Table 2).

Table 2

The Web Soil Survey (WSS) provides soil data and information produced by the National Cooperative Soil Survey. It is operated by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and provides access to the largest natural resource information system in the world. NRCS has soil maps and data available online for more than 95 percent of the nation’s counties and anticipates having 100 percent in the near future. The site is updated and maintained online as the single authoritative source of soil survey information. It can be found at: http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/

The most frequent Soil Reports run from Web Soil Survey are shown in Table 3 below. Hydrologic Soil Group, Physical properties and Engineering properties are the top three most requested reports nationally.

Table 3

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