Soils Inventory

Land (Soil) Capability Classes
As part of a basic natural resources inventory, the Stewardship Advisory Team felt that the soil's erodiblity and type should be considered when conducting management planning activities and therefore this item became one part of the national Level One Natural Resources inventory. The land capability class is a rating defined by the Natural Resources Conservation Service that relates to the lands capability for agricultural production. The eight classes range from 1, no limitations, to 8, severe limitations are the only factor that needs addressed. See the following links for more definitions and background information.

NRCS – Definitions of Land Capability Classes See the definitions provided near the bottom of this Natural Resources Conservation Service web page. These eight classes are used to classify Corps project lands.

There are several options for sources of information for obtaining the land capability classes at your project. You may want to check with the local conservation district officer or nearest Natural Resources Conservation Office for their assistance. Information may be obtained through evaluation of soil mapping units from the county soil survey.

GIS users should visit the following links to the NRCS SURGO data sites. The SURGO data is digital soil surveys that may be linked to databases that contain the land capabilities classes. GIS users can download the data (if available for your project area), combine the databases, clip the data to your project boundary and query results for acreage of the different capability classes.

Soil Data Mart (Many types of Soil data.)

SURGO Products from NRCS (Digital soil data for GIS use.)

Web Soil Survey (WSS) (Web based soil survey. Do not need ArcGIS or other GIS system.)

Soil Data Viewer Site (A tool built as an extension to ArcMap that allows a user to create soil-based thematic maps.)

Gateway Soils Site An array of soils information developed by the Gateway Team.

>Procedures for obtaining and processing information for OMBIL Project Site Land (Soils) Capability Classes