Using Computer Tools to Generate Soil Information and Derive Alternatives for Land-Use Planning and Zoning.

For many years soil survey data has been made for various purposes, including both agriculture and urban planning at the local, state, regional, and national levels.  The passage of PL-89-560 in September 1966 reaffirmed the intentions of Congress in regard to city and urban planning.    Government employees are expected to be more accountable for their technical information as well as being consistent with the data they present across large and varying geographical landscapes.  Computer models are helping in achieving both of these concerns.  They provide a reliable and integrated approach for using soil chemical and physical properties, landscape features, and climate data in land-use planning. The computer models and tools can also address economic considerations that help planners defend and explain their decisions to concerned citizens.  The models must be flexible enough for selection between small geographical sites (less than one acre) or large tracts (thousands of acres) of land.  The two scales use the same data (soil map and soil interpretive data) to help people make land-use decisions.  The Soil Data Mart (SDM), Web Soil Survey (WSS), and Computer-Aided Land Evaluation System (CALES) generate information to aid the decision-making process.  The CALES web site is for people responsible for developing relative values for different soils or geographical areas for comparison purposes.  The CALES program requires significant user input and results vary based on the objective of the user.  One desirable objective is for agricultural zoning to protect the best cropland, rangeland, forestland, or pastureland.  Another objective is using the Land Evaluation results for meeting requirements of the Farmland Protection Policy Act (FPPA).  The SDM, WSS, and CALES computer tools furnish numerical soil information to answer questions that land-use planners, decision makers, and others have.  Decisions can then be made and defended.