The Next Generation of Soil Survey Digital Products

Advances in computer technology (within the past two decades) and access to geographically accurate digital environmental data (i.e., elevation and its derivatives, geology, land use, climate, parent material, and remotely sensed spectral data) have created enormous advancements in our ability to produce soil information at fine spatial resolutions (10-90 m). The data contained in each of these grid cells are data rich in nature and include probability and uncertainty information that allow the modeling of the soil continuum. The same advances in computer technology and digital information are now being applied to data capture for pedon descriptions. Coined "digital morphometrics,"this set of methodologies provide the potential to collect pedon soil property information that defines the continuum of the soil column, no longer restricting pedon information to aggregated "blocks" of data. Potentials and application of this new data model for pedon descriptions will be examined, studied, and presented in this paper.