Viewing your soils map in

ArcGIS
This presentation discusses how to view a
SSURGO Soils Map in ArcGIS.
Last week we downloaded and viewed basemaps in ArcGIS. This week we are going to
expand on our spatial understanding of a watershed by examining the SSURGO Soils
Data that you downloaded.
Step 1: Open up ArcMap and find and open the map you made last week.. The map
below shows Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
The next step is to add the soils layer.
The SSURGO soil data in ArcGIS is composed of several shape files:
soilsa_a - soil survey area boundary polygons
soilmu_a - map unit boundary polygons
soilmu_l - line map units
soilmu_p - point map units
soilsf_l - line spot features
soilsf_p - point spot features
soilsf_t - spot feature descriptions
We will be using the soilmu_a which are the map unit boundary polygons. The text file
in with the soil survey gives a more complete description of what each of the other layers
are showing.
Here is the soils map for Wounded Knee Creek. We can make the map a little
easier to read if we change the color of individual soil units. Right click on the soils
layer. Then click properties and then symbology.
If you click on Categories and unique values you will get something like you see
below. In the Values Field click on Musym and finally Add All Values Click Ok.
This will show all of the different soil types (musyms) as different colors.
Next, you can use the identify tool to get identify the soils in your river basin. In the
picture below you can see that the lime green soil is the predominant soil within the river
basin. It is likely an alluvium. So, to get a better idea of what is happening in the river
valley, you should identify other soils near the river as well. Take a look at the soils
along the entire length of river within the watershed, or at least, for several kilometers.
Next, use the identify tool to find the soil symbols along your river. Click on the identify
tool. The screen below pops up. Make sure that the soils layer is the one you are
identifying. The musym is what is recorded on the soil survey. You should make a
Excel spreadsheet of the musyms along the river channel. If you are proficient with
ArcGIS, you can use the locate by attribute tool to make this process a little quicker.
Use the identify tool to find what types of soils are near your river. In Excel create a chart with two tables:
Soil Type and Count. For each unique soil type, you can count how often it appears in your river valley.
Then graph the data as a column graph. This step is shown in two pages. On the next page is a .
The graph below shows by area the amounts of each type of soil along Wounded Knee Creek. Using the
soil survey for Shannon County, I found that Aa is alluvium, CaF is Canyon association, Cc is Canyon-Rock
outcrop association, OcE is Oglala Canyon complex, RkC is Rosebud-Keith silt loam, and Mm is Mosher-
minatare complex. It should be evident that the CaF, CC, OcE, RkC, and Mm are the most significant soils
in this river valley.
Advanced Topic: To use the Locate by Attribute tool, you need to select Musym as the layer that you will be
locating from. Then click on locate by attributes and select every Musym that is a particular distance (say 500
meters) from your rivers layer. To do this effectively, you will first have to make a river sublayer from your larger
rivers layer. Once you have selected the Musyms within 500 meters of your river, then you can look at the
sublist. You can then collect statistics on how many Musyms of a particular kind. You can then export this data
into Excel.
Using the Soil Survey for Shannon County, I wrote up short descriptions of the soils
around Wounded Knee Creek. As you can see, the soils around Wounded Knee
Creek are very fine-grained (mostly silts and very fine-sands and clay) Recall from
your reading of Chapter 2 that the texture of the bed material is an important factor in
the morphology of a river. Another thing you should note is how the soil gets to
where it gets (e.g. is the soil a product of colluvium, glacial scour, residual soils,
dunes, eolean deposits etc.).
Read the next section on using Microsoft Access for more ideas on using SSURGO.