Selecting the Soil
Specify the average or dominant soil texture in your parcel.
Most soil types vary within their texture category, so you should
specify the soil texture that best describes the soil in your parcel.
The texture specified is for the top 7 inches (20 centimeters) of soil.
If
your parcel has two or more widely differing soil types like clay soil
and sandy soil, we recommend you produce reports for
each soil type separately, using the approximate area of each type as
the parcel area.
This is a required item. The default surface texture is "Clay Loam".
Figure 8: Example of Soil Selection Screen
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The soil texture names used in the interface follow the standard soil textures used by
the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA).
For more
details, see the texture triangle in the
Soil Science Society of America Glossary.
The following table shows the average sand, silt, and clay fractions
for each soil texture.
| Soil Texture |
Sand |
Silt |
Clay |
Soils Included in Texture Category |
| clay loam |
28%
|
41%
|
31%
|
clay loam |
| loam |
40%
|
41%
|
19%
|
loam |
| loamy sand |
81%
|
14%
|
5%
|
fine sand, loamy coarse sand, loamy fine sand, loamy
very fine sand, sand
|
| sandy loam |
61%
|
27%
|
12%
|
fine sandy loam, very fine sandy loam, coarse sandy
loam,sandy clay loam
|
| silty clay loam |
7%
|
60%
|
33%
|
silty clay, clay |
| silt loam |
12%
|
68%
|
20%
|
silt loam |
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Select the hydric type of the surface soil in your parcel.
This is a required item. The default hydric type is "No".
A hydric soil develops
under moderate to poor drainage conditions.
Soils that were frequently ponded or saturated from flooding during a
significant portion of the year are most often classified as "hydric"
soils. This means that some or all of the surface soil was anaerobic
(i.e., oxygen is virtually absent from the
soil) for some portion of the year.
If the surface soil in your parcel has been tile drained, consider it to be hydric.
To learn more about the technical criteria for determining a hydric soil, see the following information from the
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture:
Hydric Soils.
Click the next button and you will be taken to the "Rotation History"
screen.
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