Detailed Soil Surveys

GENERAL OVERVIEW

Soil surveys have been published for most of the agricultural areas, and many surrounding areas, across Canada. Data from these surveys comprise the most detailed soil inventory information in the NSDB.

The significant characteristics of detailed soil surveys are as follows.

• SCALE: 1:10,000 up to 1:250,000
• COVERAGE:  Coverage consists of 1300 map sheets (datasets) mainly of the significant agricultural areas.  Only a small part of the Canadian land area is  covered.  For specific coverage, see the metadata.
• SYMBOLIZATION:  Within survey projects symbolization and legend is consistent and correlated between map sheets.  Map symbols and the associated information in the Map Unit table and the Component Table are not unique but may be repeated in other map polygons.
• CORRELATION:  In general, map edges have not been matched to computer tolerances and inconsistencies between projects in terms of symbolization and correlation may make combination of the data quite difficult.
• ATTRIBUTES:  For each polygon, the Component Table typically defines up to three soils and an estimate of the proportion of each soil within the map unit.  Additional soils may have been identified in the original soil survey, but not included in the digital attribute tables because of historical file structure limitations.  Each soil referred to in the Component Table is described further in the Soil Name Table and the  Soil Layer Table.

The relationships of the various files may be understood by examining the data model.
 

Dataset descriptions

CIVIL coverage HYDRO coverage SOIL coverage Polygon Attribute Table (SOIL.PAT) Map Unit Table (SOIL.MAPUNIT) Component Table (SOIL.CMP)  Soil Name Table (SOIL.NAME Soil Layer Table (SOIL.LAYER) DOC file readme.txt

Usage

The Component Table and the other attribute tables that describe the SOIL coverage are in INFO format.  These tables will be found in the INFO directory where the coverage was imported.

In order to display the soil information found in the SOIL coverage, it should be mapped in conjuction with the HYDRO coverage.  The detailed soil surveys use the same Component Table concept as the Soil Landscapes of Canada, and the attributes in this file are mapped in a similar fashion.  For more information, see:

• How to map Soil Landscape polygons
• How to map Component Table attributes.

The following ArcView extensions facilitate mapping and analysis of these datasets.

• Soil Mapper
• Component Table Mapper

Availability

A number of these datasets are available on the Internet in ARC/INFO EXPORT format, compressed as *.zip.  PDF files of some of the original soil reports are also available.  You may search for and download these files using any of the following methods:

• Index map (including search by place name)
• Keyword search (by province, soil report number or map title)
• Index of GIS datasets
• Index of soil reports.