0.5 Tiny Bytes: Soil Series

Soil series names hold invaluable information that can inform land use and agricultural practices. Join us as we explore soil series and their characteristics, featuring insights on collecting data, understanding soil maps, and highlighting the significance of favorite series like Fargo and Williams.

• Soil series names relate to specific regions and provide insight into soil characteristics
• The importance of five soil-forming factors in classification
• How to access soil survey data for informed land management decisions
• The relevance of local soil characteristics in agriculture and farming
• Engaging with soil series can lead to deeper insights about land and environmental quality

CLORPT: Climate, organisms, relief, parent material, time

NRCS Web Soil Survey: https://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/WebSoilSurvey.aspx

SoilWeb App for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.casoilresourcelab.soilweb&hl=en_US

SoilWeb App for Apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/soilweb/id354911787

KML of SoilWeb for use in Google Earth: https://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/soil_web/kml/SoilWeb.kmz

Soil Series Data Explorer (where you can pop in the name of a soil series and get information about that soil): https://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/sde/

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Soil Series Names and Classification
• 8:57 Understanding Soil Series Characteristics
• 18:05 Discovering Soil Series Through Personal Names

Transcript

Jodi: 0:00

And now it's time for a tiny bite of knowledge.

Sarah: 0:12

When we think of a name, for instance, like a name of a person like Darin Johnson, for example, we think of somebody who is really good at building computers, computer programming, has a fantastic voice for radio. Has a fantastic voice for radio. I mean, these are some of the characteristics that you know. Helps me identify who Darin Johnson is. But did you know that soils have names as well, Jodi? Have you ever thought about what's in a name for a soil?

Jodi: 0:51

I have, and I was lucky to take some classes in college about it, which was amazing, but the information that's contained in those soils names is also available to all of us as well. Talk about today what a soil series name is, where you can find that information and why it might be helpful when we're making maps to know a little bit about what is actually behind a soil's name, Absolutely so.

Sarah: 1:16

the name of a soil is called the soil series. So oftentimes a soil series, it literally is a name. So some of the ones I can think of off the top of my head would be Fargo, Williams, Glyndon, Renshaw, Daiglin. There's tons of different names out there for soils, but they are unique and they can be identified by different characteristics of that soil. So when you think of a name of a soil, you're going to think about a particular soil color, a texture. You know how sandy, how clayey is it, the structure within that soil, the soil pH, what type of parent material, and how was that soil formed? What climate is that soil in?

Jodi: 2:09

So, for example, you can have a soil that has very similar color and texture but if it's a North Dakota versus Arkansas, it's going to have very different uses, simply because of the climate that it's surrounded in, absolutely, and that's the fun part like, if you really dig into this, there's almost a soil series name, almost any soil series name you can think of. Well, they're mostly based on towns or like areas where that soil series was first named. But we'll get into that later about why that is and who does those namings and stuff. But, as sarah was saying, like, as you move across the country as climate changes, as your five soil forming factors change right when we think about clorped climate, living organisms, relief, parent material and time, those things change as you move across the region, north and south and east to west, and so in the United States alone we have hundreds, even thousands of different soil series that describe and really classify the different soils that are found across this country.

Sarah: 3:16

One of the places where you can find the information for all of these soil series is in a soil survey. The soil survey is actually all of these soils mapped out with lines. Usually, when you find this information, it tends to be in a vector file format. It's lines, it's not colors, and that's very normal.

Jodi: 3:43

Right and that's very normal Right, like if you look, if you look at a soil series maps, it's a lot of like squiggly lines demarcating where those different soil series are Right. And if this was, you know, the 1960s or the 1970s when a lot of these soil surveys were made, at least for the for North Dakota you would find this information in a soil survey book for North Dakota. You would find this information in a soil survey book and maybe that'd be at your local FSA office or your local library or maybe, like me, you just have these in your library for whatever reason, because you're cool.

Sarah: 4:10

That's one of the characteristics of Jodi. It's who she is. That's what it means for it to be a Jodi name person. You have to own soil series books. Having saying that, I'm very jealous.

Jodi: 4:21

I? I would suspect you have one in your office someplace. I have one. I don't have very many exactly. Okay anyways. But my point is is like when you open that soil survey book or you find this soil survey information online or you bring it up in your GIS software, it's often going to be of these maps are going to be you know, squiggly lines that have a letter and maybe a number that refer back to a soil series that that refers to for that area, and this is the same information. Say, if you're looking at an auction for some soil that's coming up for sale, they will most likely have the soil survey data there, so telling what name of the soil is there, how much of that area of the land that's for sale is covered by that soil series. Same thing for when you go and look at the productivity index the productivity index, exactly. So all this information that's generated from that is based on this classification system of soil survey that was done to name and classify these soils.

Sarah: 5:21

Absolutely so. Jodi nailed it the soil survey really is basically a bunch of squiggly lines showing the boundaries between where these soils begin and end. And yeah, a lot of these soil surveys were determined by scientists who are soil classifiers, very specialized people who know how to look at the soils and analyze where they fall on the landscape and take a look at the pedons, which is basically a big, huge soil sample in a block format, so you can really see what's going on going down. That's kind of what it's like. But anyway, they started doing this back in like the 1960s. That's when they started classifying some of these soils and these soil surveys. In some places they have been updated, but in many places they haven't, and what's interesting about that is how accurate they actually were for identifying these soils. So it's just it's fun to see the maps, it's fun to see where they fall in the landscape and interesting to think at how well people did back in the 1960s. So, Jodi, what is your favorite soil series?

Jodi: 6:33

My favorite soil series is the Williams soil series. And why is that? The Williams soil series is my favorite soil series and like I sound like every sixth grader that's ever studied any fun facts about North Dakota, because the William soil is the state soil of North Dakota. But, more importantly, on my farm in Western North Dakota we've got a couple of fields that have William soils and it's it's hands down the most productive on our farm. It's got a lot of organic matter. It's probably the darkest soil that we have. That isn't in an area. That's really wet, it's really friable. You pick it up in your hands and it's dark and it just kind of crumples and it feels moist. It's an awesome soil. I love it. It's my favorite. That's why it's my favorite. Sarah, what's your favorite soil?

Sarah: 7:18

series. So my favorite soil series is a Fargo, and there are some people out there that are going to kind of probably question why. I think that you see, a Fargo clay is characterized by its high clay content. It is a very sticky soil. It has it's it. It's a smectitic clay, which means it's a very active, chemically active clay. It's got a very high cation exchange capacity. Generally it's got very it's very dark soils, very, very dark, high organic matter it has.

Sarah: 7:56

A Fargo clay actually is not necessarily considered to be a prairie soil. It is considered to be something that can have that prairie concept on the soil surface, but it's got more clay content to it and so it's a very dynamic soil, to be honest with you, and it can be very character building. In some places the farmers like to call it a 10-minute soil because it will go from being a place where it can really be worked with tillage equipment to too dry really quick. But it will start off too wet and you'll just make a big, huge smeary mess out there and then it'll be about right and then 10 minutes later it's going to be too dry and then you make another big mess on the other side with a lot of soil lumps in it.

Jodi: 8:41

So why are we talking about this? Why should we even care about soil series in the first place? And that's a good question. Why we care is that these characteristics can be really, really helpful in determining some generalities when we're approaching these areas.

Jodi: 8:57

So, for example, when I am looking at for me on my own farm, as we look at new farmland to rent new places where we might want to consider breaking up things, if I'm looking at a web soil survey and I see that there's an area of a field that's Williams that we haven't broken up yet, that's an area that I'd really want to consider putting crop onto because it is a fantastic soil series. On the other hand, as you've heard me talk about before, there are some pH issues in Western North Dakota and there are a couple of soil series that I closely associate with being problematic and potentially having low pH. For me in my area. Specifically, if I see a lepher soil series, it's a pretty good indication that it probably has kaolinidic clay, doesn't have a very good CEC, doesn't have a very good ability to buffer pH and may have a pH problem, and so just knowing a little bit about these characteristics of these soil series can be really helpful in predicting how they might act when we start putting crops on those soils.

Sarah: 10:07

I think that's really a great segue. I'm going to talk just for two seconds about another soil series called Renshaw, and I'm going to bring that up because a Renshaw soil series is often found further west in North Dakota, but it definitely has gravel underneath in the soil layers definitely prone to drought issues. I actually have a little bit of farmland that I work with right outside my backyard here that has that soil series in it, and routinely there's going to be issues with with drought on that particular little spot within the field. It's not that soil series does not predominate the entire field that I'm thinking of, but it is in a spot and it is on a top of a hill. I cannot get my soil probe to go down within that. It crunches all the way down and bends tips and probes because it's so rocky and gravelly and consistently the yield is much lower, also because of its sand content. Along with that, it doesn't have the cation exchange capacity, and so I've noticed that oftentimes nutrients like to leach through there.

Sarah: 11:23

So these are things that we can think about when we're seeing, but I think it's also interesting to note that while I have taken a look at soil series information and I use it in this manner all of the time, just as we're having a conversation. I have only used it to put it over the top of my zones when I'm making zone maps to help me verify where these soils might be occurring in relationship to zones that I'm making. And that's because the zones that I make tend to be reflective of crop response, whether that's using imagery with vegetative index in imagery, indicating where plant material might be more or less green across the field, or yield data itself. I really want to understand the productivity potential and what the plant is feeling and where the plant has that opportunity for better growth or maybe not quite as good a growth.

Jodi: 12:12

Yeah, absolutely. I think I hear exactly what you're saying, sarah. These are really handy maps that we can help to kind of see where soil changes in our fields or where that has the potential to change. But it's not something that I would ever use as a single layer to make a zone map out of. It's information about some generalities and characteristics of soil, but it's not telling me exactly where in the field that I've got different vegetative growth potentials.

Jodi: 12:40

So, for example, again let's think about when these soil surveys were made. A lot of them were made 60 years ago and they're not meant to be specific for every single field. There weren't soil surveyors that went out to every single field and dug a soil pit and characterized every single field. They're really looking at the landscape position here and making generalities over a landscape, and so they're not exact those lines. They're not exact to your specific field. You want to get more specific to that when you're making your zone maps, and so they're a fantastic tool to have to help learn more about what's going on in the field, why you might be seeing certain things in the field, but it's a layer that I'm not going to average into or just use as my base zone map.

Sarah: 13:31

I think that's a great point. I actually am aware of. Well, there's a place right out here by Halstead on the North Dakota side, where, for, quite frankly, miles and miles, the soil survey is mapped as just Fargo-Hegney. So yeah, one soil type for a long way out there, and when you hear the name Fargo-Hegney, that's actually Hegney is another soil series. But what we're saying is that within that area you've got a percentage of characteristics from each one of those soil series. But what we're saying is that within that area, you've got a percentage of characteristics from each one of those soil series, so you're not actually identifying just one or the other. You're saying it's a complex of both and so oftentimes, and the first one is the one that's dominating, but you're going to have those characteristics of the other. Okay, Anyway, throughout this area outside of Halstead, there's places there where for miles and miles, it's mapped as one soil series.

Sarah: 14:21

And so there was a company that was making zones just from soil series data, so it brought up a half section from that area and they couldn't do it because it was only one soil series on that same field, because drainage is such a big issue, Even using some of the topography features of the field along with because there's ditching and everything that happens in potholes, that happen in this neck of the woods. You can bring those topography features up and then bring in some satellite imagery and it's amazing the zones that you can get from that combination. And of course those are just two different data layers. Other places it might be more appropriate to be bringing in salinity data or those kinds of things. But it makes the point that sometimes it's nice to use that layer. Oftentimes I'm always turning on my soils map just so I can verify where the soil changes are occurring in that field, especially in relationship to the zones that I'm making. But I'm not going to use it as a standalone option.

Jodi: 15:24

So a couple of things I want to add to this too, and just A to add on to what Sarah said about the Fargo-Brenshaw no Fargo-Hegney, Fargo-Hegney and then also talk a little bit about where you can find this information. So first let's talk about where you can find this information. So first let's talk about where you can find this. The NRCS hosts this information online, and so if you just look up Web Soil Survey, it'll bring you to a portal. It can be a little bit cumbersome to use. Personally, I have downloaded a KMZ that I can just pop into my Google Earth, and I also have data with an ADMS as a data layer so that I can just pop it over the maps and I'm making an ADMS. So there's a couple of different ways that you can access this.

Sarah: 16:04

If you are an ADMS user, we do actually have that formatted into county data folders that are accessible. If you talk to us here, Keep in mind it's free data. Anybody can download it and go and find that data from the NRCS and create your own data layer for your own. But if you need help with that, we certainly have that capability here as well.

Jodi: 16:28

One other thing, too, is on your phone you can also download the soil survey. Is it called soil survey, web soil, web soil? And if you use your location services on your phone, it can tell you what the soil beneath your feet is mapped as. And what I want to point out about this is that when you're on the web soil survey or you're looking at the soil data in ADMS, you'll notice that it's not just telling you one soil Like. There might be a dominant soil there the soil series might be called something but there's also percentages of other soil types listed there too.

Jodi: 17:06

Again, this comes back to the fact that when we're looking at soil survey, what they're trying to do is map a whole landscape of soils, and so they can't be like. There might be some cases where this is 100% this soil, but we're living in and soils are complex and there can be inclusions of these other soil types as you go across that area. That's mapped as one thing, so just keep that in mind. When you're looking through this data, you might see more than just one name pop up.

Sarah: 17:34

But if you are going on a big road trip to someplace that you haven't visited, I will be honest. I use web soil all the time, mostly for entertainment purposes as I'm driving down the road, because I could find out what soil I'm on. It's super fun. You should try it.

Jodi: 17:49

Please invite both Sarah and I on any road trips. We are super fun as road trip companions and party companions, yeah.

Sarah: 17:58

I'll go wow, this is now now complex of Hegney and Fargo. Hegney is now the dominant soil series. It's super fun.

Jodi: 18:05

Learning more about soils and soil series is really fun, and what I would encourage all of you guys to do is go out, figure out what the soil is mapped as underneath your feet or in the areas that you cover, what your favorite soil is, figure out the name of it and, if you don't have one of those in mind, Google your own name, for example.

Sarah: 18:29

I'm looking at the Ryan series here because it's a close competitor to Fargo, believe it or not. But the Ryan soil series is actually also a more sodic version of basically a Fargo, believe it or not, but the Ryan soil series is actually also a more sodic version of basically a Fargo soil. So you can like Google a first name or and and put like Ryan soil series, if you're trying to do that, and then then you'll see a soil series pops up and then you can check it out.

Jodi: 18:56

There is a whole lot of fun to be had here, and so, as you're exploring soils.

Sarah: 19:02

Go ahead and respond to our social media posts. Give us a review on our podcast and let us know in the review what your favorite soil series is. Tune in next time for a tiny bite of knowledge from GK Technology where? We have a map and an app for that.