A tremendous amount of soils and vegetation data have been collected through the National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS). Soil Interpretation Records (SCS‐SOI‐5 data) and Map Unit Use File (MUUF) information have been stored on the Iowa State University Computation Center computer for correlated soil surveys. The Soil Resource Information System (SRIS) program developed through cooperation of the Colorado State Soil Conservation Service (SCS), Laboratory for Information Science in Agriculture (LISA), and the Agriculture Research Service (ARS) on the Fort Collins Computer Center System 2000 provides a data management system where any data element and nearly any combination of data elements can be queried.
All soil property, vegetation, and map unit information for six Major Land Resource Areas, primarily in the Great Basin Region, were entered on the SRIS program to test its application for documenting soil‐plant relationships and improving site correlation. The program was initially queried for soil depth, pH, clay content, rock fragment, and classification relationships to establish some soil‐plant relationships for four major sagebrush species (Artemisia spp.) as recorded on SCS‐SOI‐5 data. Information from 1092 data sets containing greater than or equal to 10 % composition by weight of one or more of the sagebrush species supported some previous studies and concepts while apparently contradicting others.
The same process used would be applicable for evaluating soil‐plant relationships for any other species or group of species in the data set.
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