ArcSIE News, August 31, 2015

NRCS ArcSIE Training 2015 Was Held in Amherst, MA

We have another great training session this year. Below is an excerpt from the most recent Weekly Report of USDA-NRCS Office of the Chief on Soil Science and Resource Assessment, Soil Science Division:

"A Digital Soil Mapping with ArcSIE training session was presented August 25-27th, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. A class of 14 participants representing 10 states and the US Forest Service learned how to utilize raster data, fuzzy classification and knowledge based mapping techniques with the ArcGIS extension, ArcSIE. Partnership with Dr. Xun Shi, Dartmouth College, along with NRCS employees Jessica Philippe, Jacob Isleib, Tom D’Avello and Zamir Libohova provided instruction on using the tool to develop inferential soil maps. These techniques and tools will be important for current and future soil survey efforts, including the Soil Data Join Recorrelation (SDJR) initiative.”

The participants of this training session are from CA, NY, TX, OH, NM, IN, and WV. Two participants are from the National Forest Service. Jacob Isleib from CT joined the cadre and gave a presentation about terrain analysis with case studies.

This year’s training substantially expanded two modules, creation of soil property maps and soil survey update with the Knowledge Discoverer. The other modules became more concise but also more intensive. It is a hope that these adjustments better suit the current needs of NRCS soil scientists.

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst provided the computer teaching room for the training. Professor Qian Yu at the Department of Geosciences of UMass-Amherst has been helping to facilitate the training in the past several years.

(By Tom D’Avello and Xun Shi)

(Photographed by Xun Shi)