GLOBE III - Mapping Soils

Purpose

To allow students to relate soils information from their schools to regional and larger scale maps.

Overview

Students obtain a local Soil Survey report for their county and locate their school and GLOBE study sites. (available from USDA for every US county; must be made available from country coordinators outside US). A copy is made of the page on which the site is located and the soil mapping unit is identified. Using this map as the base, students are instructed to go through a series of exercises to relate the properties of the soil mapping unit to other landscape parameters by drawing thematic maps of soil properties, and overlaying the base map on other maps in a simple GIS format (e.g. vegetation maps, geology maps, etc.). In addition, students can use the serial photos from the soil maps to observe changes in land use and land cover between the time the photos were taken and what is currently present. Advanced students can use the STATSGO (State soil survey maps from USDA) to scale to State level. STATSGO can be overlaid on to the School's Landsat image and other coarse scale maps to show the relationship between soils and other landscape properties at this level.

Design and Learning Approach

This learning activity ties together all aspects of the environment, allows observation at different scales, and looks at changes over time. It introduces GIS and mapping concepts, and teaches a basic way that scientists study Earth System Science.

Time Required

• 2 or 3 class periods

Skill Level

• All

Key Concepts and Skills

• Concepts: mapping units, spatial scales, thematic maps, GIS
• Skills: aggregation of data, relationship of landscape proeprties to each other

Materials and Tools

• Soil Survey Reports or other local maps
• Copy machine for making paper and transparency copies of site maps
• Colored pencils
• Other area maps if available (vegetation, geology, land use, topograpic quads,...)

Cost Impact

• minimal (to cover copy machine costs, paper, transparencies, pencils, etc)

Training Impact

• NA

Systems Impact

• Can we provide a server to automatically subset STATSGO? What auxilary information would we also make available and what would we need to explain?
• Are there existing sites that index the availability of local soils maps that we could use to make this easier?

Assessment Requirements

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