Abstract:
This dataset contains files specifying the 10,500 mapunits defined for the 48 conterminous states for the State Soil Geographic (STATSGO) soils data compiled by the Natural Resources Convservation Service (NRCS) of the USDA.
This is the gridded version at 1-km resolution. When a 1-km grid cell contains portions of two or more mapunits, the cell has been assigned to the mapunit which occupies the largest fraction of the cell.
Supplemental_Information:
The information below was compiled from the following web page:
http://www.essc.psu.edu/soil_info/index.cgi?soil_data&conus&data_cov
Overview
This dataset was created by joining the polygons which define the mapunits for the STATSGO coverage for each of the 48 conterminous states (mapunits for the District of Columbia are included under Maryland).
To increase compatability with different types of data analysis software, the dataset is available in several different data file formats. These include both Arc/Info polygon format and a gridded version at 1 km resolution; the latter is available in both Arc/Info grid format and as a two-dimensional array of 16-bit binary integers. The description of dataset files provides additional details on formats, the data files asociated with each format, and instructions for file retrieval.
For the gridded version of the mapunits, any 1-km grid cell which contains portions of two or more mapunits is assigned to the mapunit which occupies the largest fraction of the cell; six mapunits did not occupy the largest fraction of any cell, with the result that the gridded version contains only 10494 mapunits. Since Arc/Info grids can contain only numeric values, the STATSGO alphanumeric mapunit ID (such as AL001) is replaced by a mapunit serial number having a value between 1 and 10500. The translation table between mapunit serial number and mapunit ID is available in both ASCII and arc/info INFO table format; it is incorporated into the Value Attribute Table (VAT) for the Arc/Info grid format version of the mapunits.