Highlights from the 1992 national resources inventory

Robert L. Kellogg; Gale W. TeSelle; J. Jeffery Goebel

Excerpt

The Soil Conservation Service (SCS) released in July of this year a new and comprehensive database that provides a spatial and temporal record of the nation's resources on non-federal land—the 1992 National Resources Inventory (NRI)(3). The 1992 release updates previous results and provides data for the decade 1982–1992. Information is available for three years—1982, 1987, and 1992. The NRI was scientifically designed and conducted and is based on recognized statistical sampling methods. Data were collected at about 800,000 statistically selected sample locations throughout the United States by SCS field personnel and resources inventory specialists. NRI data are statistically reliable for national, regional, state, and multi-county analysis.

The scope of the NRI is far too broad to summarize completely here. Included in these highlights is a selection of results at the national level for current land use, changes in land use, prime farmland, wind and sheet and rill erosion rates, estimates of soil savings, and wetlands. Further analysis of the 1992 NRI database by SCS and other agencies and organizations that deal with natural resource issues will result in further insights and perspectives on the condition of our natural resources

Footnotes

Robert L. Kellogg, Gale W. TeSelle, and J. Jeffery Goebel are with the Resources Inventory and GIs Division of the Soil Conservation Service. On behalf of SCS, USDA, and the public, the authors would like to thank the thousand of SCS employees and the staff at the Iowa State University Statistical Laboratory for their efforts in creating the most comprehensive statistical database on natural resources ever constructed. Without their dedication to the NRI and their diligence in carrying it out, this paper would not be possible. The authors would also like to thank Dean Oman, Resources Inventory and GIs Division, SCS, for creating the maps, and Susan Wallace, Paradigm Systems, for making the numerical estimates.

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