California's Soil-Vegetation Survey Program: Underpinning to Detailed Mapping in the State's "Wildlands".

Soil survey work began in California in the early 1990’s with the focus on principal agricultural lands.  Seven reconnaissance surveys had been completed by 1917 covering the major valleys and coastal plain areas. Forty more surveys were completed using more detailed mapping techniques over the next 20 years, but focus remained on agricultural land use.  Nonagricultural lands were mapped as miscellaneous areas, such as rough stony land or rough broken land up through his period (1937).

Mapping of natural vegetation in forest and range lands began in the 1920’s by the Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station as an aid in the management of “wild land” (assessment of wildfire in particular).   As the story is told, A.E. Wieslander, leader of the wild land vegetation mapping effort and Dr. Earl Storie, a prominent soil surveyor from University of California at Berkeley were comparing information and noted a striking similarity in their map unit boundaries between soil and vegetation inventories.  They began working closely together, and at their urging, along with backing from the State Board of Forestry, the State Legislature established the California Soil-Vegetation Survey program in 1952.  The National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS) led by Soil Conservation Service was established in 1953.

The California Department of Forestry (CDF) established an agreement with the Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station to carry out the Soil-Vegetation Survey Program.  About 9.75 million acres of detailed Soil-Vegetation Survey mapping was completed in non-federal forest, range, and wild land areas between 1954 and 1977.  Soil Conservation Service’s (SCS) priorities remained focused more on detailed soil surveys in agricultural lands throughout much of that time.  CDF and SCS came together in a joint effort  in the 1980’s forward on the Soil-Vegetation Survey program work, until in 1992 when the State Legislature unfunded the program.  Soil resource inventories were carried out in the National Forests of California in the 1970s and 1980s.   

Thus, modern detailed soil surveys and related vegetation information in California’s forest, range and wild land areas, on both non-federal and U.S. Forest Service lands, have foundations laid by the work of the Soil-Vegetation Survey and its predecessors.  Many colorful, prominent people and stories are connected with this history along the way.