Integration of National Soil and Wetland Datasets: A Toolkit for Reproducible Calculation and Quality Assessment of Imputed Wetland Soil Properties
Wetland soils are vital to the Nation because of their role in sustaining water resources, supporting critical ecosystems, and sequestering significant concentrations of biologically-produced carbon. The United States has the world’s most detailed continent-scale digital datasets for soils and wetlands, yet scientists and land managers have long struggled with the challenge of integrating these datasets for applications in research and in resource assessment and management. The difficulties include spatial and temporal uncertainties, inconsistencies among data sources, and inherent structural complexities of the datasets. This project’s objective was to develop and document a set of methods to impute wetland soil properties by integrating Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) data with the National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) and other data sources relevant to the extent and properties of wetlands.
The project methods build on the project team’s current research and development of best practices for analysis and application of soil and wetland data. Documentation of the process is meant to assure complete transparency and reproducibility of imputed wetland soil properties, with a broad range of applications beyond the immediate interests of this project team.
Principal Investigator : Eric T Sundquist
Co-Investigator : Norman B Bliss, Sharon Waltman, Rusty Griffin, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Kate Ackerman
Cooperator/Partner : Robert Cook
- Source: USGS Sciencebase (id: 56d88328e4b015c306f6d010)
Wetland soils are vital to the Nation because of their role in sustaining water resources, supporting critical ecosystems, and sequestering significant concentrations of biologically-produced carbon. The United States has the world’s most detailed continent-scale digital datasets for soils and wetlands, yet scientists and land managers have long struggled with the challenge of integrating these datasets for applications in research and in resource assessment and management. The difficulties include spatial and temporal uncertainties, inconsistencies among data sources, and inherent structural complexities of the datasets. This project’s objective was to develop and document a set of methods to impute wetland soil properties by integrating Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) data with the National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) and other data sources relevant to the extent and properties of wetlands.
The project methods build on the project team’s current research and development of best practices for analysis and application of soil and wetland data. Documentation of the process is meant to assure complete transparency and reproducibility of imputed wetland soil properties, with a broad range of applications beyond the immediate interests of this project team.
Principal Investigator : Eric T Sundquist
Co-Investigator : Norman B Bliss, Sharon Waltman, Rusty Griffin, Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Kate Ackerman
Cooperator/Partner : Robert Cook
- Source: USGS Sciencebase (id: 56d88328e4b015c306f6d010)