NPS Soil Tools for ArcGIS
Updated August 11, 2009
Soil Tools are a set of ArcGIS tools developed by the NPS Soil Resources Inventory (SRI) team to meet the emerging needs of non-soil scientists, allowing them to access and better understand the soils data that is available within the NPS.
Our NPS Soil Resource Inventories rely heavily on tabular data, and until now the representation of soils in a GIS context has excluded much of this valuable and vital information. This can result in an oversimplification and generalization of soil types and attributes. However, the reality is that soils are generally quite complex and should be recognized as such when being represented in a GIS context. This is where the MapUnit and Pedon Tools come in. These tools give the user far more detailed information than an attribute table alone could. While far from being a comprehensive view of the tabular data available within a soil survey, the information associated with these tools marks a huge step in the geospatial representation of soils data.
Please direct questions, comments, and requests for new functionality to Pete Biggam or Judy Daniels.
Using the Soil Tools
Soil Tools is comprised of the MapUnit Identify Tool and the Pedon Identify Tool. These tools are made available to the user when he/she adds the Soils Toolbar to their ArcGIS desktop after installation. The tools geospatially link soils data with a robust description of a particular map unit or pedon point by bringing together information from various resources in an interactive and user friendly manner.
The MapUnit Identify Tool can be used with any soils shapefile that the SRI has posted to the NPS Data Store. For a complete listing of these available parks and to download data visit the NPS Data Store.