The Newhall Simulation Model (NSM), Franklin Newhall's model for soil temperature and moisture regime determination (Newhall and Berdanier, 1994), is being implemented on a nationwide basis by the National Cooperative Soil Survey, USDA-NRCS. While there is actual meteorological data available throughout the Basin and Range which can be applied to NSM, there is a notable lack of soil temperature data to develop accurate o­ffsets of soil to air temperature relationships.

In 1983 Schmidlin, Peterson, and Giff­ord published a paper in SSSAJ on the Soil Temperature Regimes of Nevada.  This was part of an informal Nevada Cooperative Soil Climate Study which began in 1971 and was completed for most stations by 1978. This rep­ort was completed by 1989 and covered most of the Great Basin within Nevada. We explore a geospatial method to evaluate soil temperatures based on current elevation transects and historic point data of Schmidlin, Peterson, and Giff­ord.  We use the air-soil temperature diff­erence, as well as information from existing soil profiles, to obtain an accurate water holding value. When combined with climatic data, this allows us to run the Newhall soil climate model across the landscapes of the Great Basin.