Future Directions in Soil Survey: Ecological Sites and Dynamic Soil Properties to Assess and Predict Soil Condition and Change.

Soil survey organizes the landscape into units with common soil properties, characteristics and classification.  Soil survey units can be used to predict soil behavior or capability and thus are useful for making management decisions and evaluating soil change. Traditionally, in the U.S., soil survey mapping concepts have been developed with the dominant use of the landscape in mind.  Current enhancement of soil survey includes documenting dynamic soil properties and soil change due to ecosystem management. Ecological sites are a concept used to describe ‘kinds of land’ that have common potential kinds and amounts of vegetation and characteristic response to disturbance. Groupings and interpretations of soil properties using an ecological site framework can serve as a useful tool for soil resource management and assessment and bring whole ecosystem insight into management decisions. The hierarchies of soil survey – including major land resource areas, soil landscapes, ecological sites and soil layers allow for scaling of assessed and expected soil information across scales.  With information about soil functions or dynamic soil properties under various types of land use or management systems spatial models can be used to assess soil change under changing policy, economic or climate conditions. This poster demonstrates the use of soil survey polygons, additional dynamic soil property data, and spatial datasets of current and projected land use and cover to evaluate soil condition and potential under various scenerios.