For any of you that may be interested in US soils descriptions as well as open formats scaled at 1:24,000 and larger identifying a minimum mapping unit of two to five acres you should surf over to
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/news/thisweek/2004/040310/nebsoilsurvey.html <http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/news/thisweek/2004/040310/nebsoilsurvey.html> Nebraska could be considered as a signal state for what sort of digital soil surveys to expect from your county, regional, or state office of the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) of the Department of Agriculture. The University of Nebraska is the Land Grant arm for its growers. Importantly, NRCS bases a large number of important soils and soils information specialists and office locations in Lincoln, in particular its "soil survey" group. Other important NRCS labs for electronic formats are located near Fort Worth, TX and another in Fort Collins, Colorado. The formalization of the Nation's soil survey to digital form has been far slower than I would have expected. I'll suspect it's a choice to re-image with new third order field survey or to more simply take a scan of the legacy work. I bet the recent soil surveys are the former, a more expensive re-survey, where as Iowa was a ISPAID scanning project? There are likely many more counties in process than the "released" reports would indicate.... Sometimes soil survey information and its land classification and determinations are sensitive to many communities in the County and surrounds... analysis paralysis being the likely result. I would suggest that you contact the most local NRCS office to find information not listed in the report above. They may also have very inexpensive annual "local" imagry from the last cropping season (leaf on) as well as they are likely a depository for National Aerial Imagery taken every five years - more up to date than the similar image quality as found on TerraLink. NRCS - USDA Main Pages http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/land/nrcsdata.html <http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/land/nrcsdata.html> NRCS Ft Worth, TX GIS Lab http://www.ftw.nrcs.usda.gov/Welcome.html <http://www.ftw.nrcs.usda.gov/Welcome.html> NRCS Ft Collins, CO "red drape" http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/projects/projects.htm?ACCN_NO=402454 <http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/projects/projects.htm?ACCN_NO=402454&fy=20 00> &fy=2000 USGS 5 Year Leaf-off Imagry http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/finder/finder_main.pl?dataset_name=NAPP <http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/finder/finder_main.pl?dataset_name=NAPP> TerraLink FYI MidNight Mapper
