The Long Awaited Soil Survey is DONE!

The Plymouth County Conservation District is enthusiastic with the release of the long awaited update of Plymouth County soil survey. Although updated soils information has been available by site and upon request, the last soil survey published for Plymouth County was in 1969. The soil survey now fills a hole as a resource planning tool that has been missing for an extended period of time.

Final Acre Ceremony

A Final Acre Ceremony was held on November 5th at the UMass Cranberry Station to celebrate the culmination of 20 years of acre by acre field mapping, documenting, describing and certifying each soil unit with their characteristics and limitations. We are grateful to the NRCS Soil Scientists that worked on the survey, Peter Fletcher, Jim Turene, Meredith Ashworth, Rob Tunstead, Bill Taylor, Debbie Surabian and Donald Parizek, as well as the private contract mappers that worked for the Plymouth County Conservation District over the years. District soil scientists included; Terry Schneider, Tom Peragallo and Brian Parks.

A Valuable Planning Tool Released

The updated survey includes soil mapping with a minimum size delineation of a half acre. The accuracy is greatly improved and the soils descriptions reflect the advancement of soil science and technology. It is currently the most advanced soil survey in the state today. The Updated Plymouth soil survey is a valuable resource planning tool that will be easily assessable to all as a data layer. It can be down loaded from two NRCS sites: SoilDataMart or WebSoilSurvey

Free the Soil!

If you would like to access the data layer and view it through Google Earth go to www.nesoil.com select view the soil survey through Google Earth link, and download the kmz file to your computer. Then, open your GE, zoom to a site in Plymouth County and select “open file” from the pull down menu to open the kmz file. Each polygon has a button that will access the extensive data base and attribute table including a visual soil profile. It is also available on any devise that can access GE including i-phones and tablets.

This file was created by the Soil Department of the University of California, Davis, to which we are eternally grateful.