2010 Soils Planner-Development of the US Soil Survey.

The 2010 Soils Planner focuses on the history of the US Soil Survey and its important contributions to the cooperative conservation of the land.  It highlights the history of the US Soil Survey and Conservation Movement. These disciplines integrated landscape ecology, agriculture, chemistry, physics and geosciences. Their cooperation eventually created a body of knowledge that is used to develop and sustain the environment.   Soil surveying and soil science in the United States developed only a little more than a century ago, starting in the late 1890’s with several state and regional surveys of agricultural soils. To understand the complexity of soil as a biological and geological system, soil science in the early 20^th century brought together the tools of chemistry, physics, biology, climatology, geography and other sciences to the study of soil itself.  As the scientific field of soil survey was developing, the Soil Conservation Movement began to gain momentum in the late 1920’s. With a surge in interest in healing and protecting the land for Agriculture, the US government moved closer to the establishment of an agency that would deal head-on with the issues of soil erosion and land degradation in the US. Using the communication tool of a calendar targeted to professionals, laymen and students, the USDA-NRCS Soils Planner (with SSSA, and other groups partnering in printing and distribution) has been successfully distributing soils information to a variety of users over a 10 year period.

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See more from this Division: S10 Wetland Soils
See more from this Session: Symposium--Communicating Science to the Public: Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

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