NRCS Soil Geochemistry Program Developed

A soil geochemistry program has been developed by the National Soil Survey Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. The major objectives of the program are to –
• evaluate, institute, and monitor quality of laboratory geochemical methods and data,
• investigate concentrations and distribution of native (background) concentrations of trace metals in U.S. soils, and
• provide leadership in the application and use of geochemical data for NRCS and the Soil Survey.

In union with the new soil geochemistry program, a soil geochemistry database has been compiled - a unique and original effort for NRCS. This database includes major and trace elements with associated characterization data. These data are available at the USDA Soil Web site http://soils.usda.gov/survey/geochemistry/ (click on "access to data") featuring a geospatial display of data. The four layers of the website are site characteristics, major elements, trace elements, and associated characterization data. A fifth layer of trace element data from Journal of Environmental Quality (Holmgren et al., 1993) is also included.

The analytical focus of the program is the examination of soil geochemistry of major horizons within pedons, including both anthropogenic and non-anthropogenically contaminated soils. This approach allows a greater utility for these data compared to geochemical surveys that analyze only trace elements of surface horizons. It functions for evaluation of background levels for site remediation and pedogenic interpretations with depth. A statistical evaluation was conducted to assess general trends in the dataset and published in the Journal of Environmental Quality (Burt et al., 2003).

Major soil series in the United States, their geographic distribution, and background (native) elemental content are being evaluated. This has resulted in a study to systematically evaluate all benchmark soils and other geographically extensive soils in the United States. The effort has initiated a new evaluation of the long-term goals for sampling pedons in the United States for both characterization and geochemical evaluation.

The soil geochemistry program is developing cooperative research for soil survey application. This work is designed to incorporate soil geochemistry into the mainstream products of soil survey. It will better position the NRCS Soil Survey to address needs of current and future customers. Data have applicability in pedology, geomorphic landform definition, and environmental assessment. This assessment of land use impact by urban and industrial users is a new direction for the NRCS Soil Survey and will improve the applicability of soil surveys and widen the user base in an increasingly urban society. These data have a direct application to the NRCS research mission as well as link to the agency's mission to support the Clean Water Act, and add value to the soil survey program for a wide array of applications.
Your contacts are NRCS research soil scientists Rebecca Burt at 402-437-5133, or rebecca.burt@nssc.nrcs.usda.gov and Mike Wilson at 402-437-4134, or mike.wilson@nssc.nrcs.usda.gov

The Soil Geochemistry Spatial Database Website operates by using ArcIMS (ESRI, Inc.) and functions very similar to ArcView. The site comes up with the “Site Info” layer both visible and active. Visible indicates that the layer is displayed (e.g., US States, US Counties, Countries), and Active indicates that the data from that layer is currently accessible.