Excerpt
How will soil scientists face the ongoing challenge of communicating soil survey information to a diverse audience in the 21st Century? Rapid developments in computer technology, the evolution of the Internet and the emerging field of information design provide a largely untapped potential for improving the quality and accessibility of soil survey information.
The key is to channel that computing and Internet potential into a standard framework for digital soil survey report delivery. What would such a framework look like? Several soil scientists have tackled that question by building a web-based prototype report designed to meet the needs of the next generation of soil survey users. In planning the prototype, the designers took into account the current soil-landscape model used in soil survey as well as lessons learned from previous Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) electronic soil survey examples.
Soil survey and information delivery
In the early-1990's, articles written on the science of survey science, by NRCS Soil Survey Division Director Berman Hudson discuss the state factor equation of soil formation. This equation, developed by the soil science pioneers V.V. Dokuchaev and E.W. Hilgard, is still the underlying model for the soil-landscape …
Footnotes
Douglas A. Miller is a research associate and director for outreach with The Pennsylvania State University's EMS Environment Institute in University Park, Pennsylvania. Gary W. Petersen is a soil scientist in The Pennsylvania State University's Agronomy Department. Philip J. Kolb is a graphic/cartographic designer and Jon Voortman is a GIS analyst at The Pennsylvania State University's EMS Environment Institute in University Park, Pennsylvania.
- Copyright 2002 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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