Ecological Site Descriptions and Digital Soil Maps for Management in Red Spruce (Picea rubens) Communities of West Virginia.

The USDA-NRCS Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) database has provided baseline data for land use planning since the early 20^th century. Although SSURGO has been widely used, modern demands for quantitative high resolution soil information at a field scale limit use of SSURGO. This is mainly due to a polygonal structure and aggregated attribution of soil types. These spatial issues with SSURGO create added work for natural resource professionals trying to implement conservation planning strategies. In forest and range lands, these strategies often use Ecological Site Descriptions (ESD) to help interpret soil, climate, floral, faunal, and human interactions into management decision schema. To improve data, SSURGO maps were disaggregated into 1-arc second (~28-meters in WV) gridded soil map using digital soil mapping methods. This map allows for creation of uncertainty measures and fuzzy membership of multiple soils at each pixel to better spatially represent soil mapping data for use with ESD in conservation planning. ESD were developed from field data for parts of Pocahontas and Randolph Counties, WV, to use with the disaggregated SSURGO map. The more detailed soil-ESD map has provided new context into historical extents of red spruce (Picea rubens) using podzol soil properties as historical tracers for these communities. Results show potential in constructing restoration and management plans for high elevation red spruce forest communities in the Central Appalachians. These communities currently exist in greatly diminished extents due to historically intense tree harvest and fire across much of the high central Appalachians. They serve as a refuge for biodiversity and rare species such as the Cheat Mountain Salamander (Plethodon nettingi).