Revision and Update of the Soil Survey Manual, Agricultural Handbook #18.

The Soil Survey Manual has long been the field soil scientist’s guide to conducting soil survey. Originally assembled by Dr. Charles E Kellogg in 1937 as Miscellaneous Publication No. 274, the Soil Survey Manual has served generations of soil scientist’s performing soil mapping. The Soil Survey Manual, originally published in a paperback, was updated and released in 1951 as Agricultural Handbook #18, and updated last in 1993. Soil scientists from NRCS and soils faculty at cooperating universities are revising the Soil Survey Manual. This update to the Soil Survey Manual will be digital and take advantage of the flexibility digital publishing affords including expanded use of graphics and photography, tabular data, hyperlinks to other references and research articles, and adapted for viewing on devices such as tablets and smartphones. Technical advances in the science of soils, the methodologies for conducting soil inventories and the advances in data tools for analyzing and displaying soil survey information brings about a need to update the Soil Survey Manual to maintain its usefulness. Subject matter expert guest authors will develop new chapters and sections addressing remote sensing and digital mapping tools. Significant new areas being developed include: digital soil mapping and geospatial analyses utilizing tools such as satellite imagery, LIDAR data geophysical surveys, and other common tools such as GPS and GIS; description and mapping of subaqueous soils; description and mapping of human altered and transported materials (HATM) from ICOMANTH recommendations; soil Climate monitoring, hardware, data management, and analysis.