1

National

Cooperative

Soil

Survey Newsletter

Issue 9

December 1999

In This Issue—

Editor’s Note

Issues of this newsletter are

available on the World Wide Web

(www.statlab.iastate.edu/soils/soildiv).

Click on NCSS and then on the desired

issue number of the NCSS Newsletter.

You are invited to submit stories for

future issues of this newsletter to

Stanley Anderson, National Soil Survey

Center, Lincoln, Nebraska. Phone—

402-437-5357; FAX—402-437-5336;

email—

stan.anderson@nssc.nrcs.usda.gov.

The Early Soil Survey:

Engine for the Soil

Conservation Movement

By Douglas Helms, Historian, Natural

Resources Conservation Service, Washington,

D.C.

Aspects of soil conservation and avoidance of land degradation

are only a few of the interpretations

found in soil surveys. Our current level

of knowledge of soils, their use, and the

ability to advise land users arose from

several historic developments. First,

one had to be able to identify and

describe significant soil characteristics

and to classify soil bodies (at least at

the lowest level). Second, land users,

soil scientists, and other researchers,

through a combination of empirical

observations and scientific research,

had to learn the factors leading to soil

degradation. Finally, they needed to

develop recommendations, or

interpretations. One interpretation

might be the recognition that some soils

are not suited to particular uses. More

often, the interpretations involved a

range of management

recommendations. The interpretations

had to be related to a particular soil

type. To utilize the recommendations,

one needed to identify the soil type on

the map and on the landscape.

In the 100-year history of the

National Cooperative Soil Survey, soil

scientists have mapped 90 percent of

the Nation’s private land, 48 percent of

American Indian land, and 47 percent

of the public lands. About 78 percent of

the total land area of the United States

has been mapped. Published soil

surveys consist of maps, tables, and

narrative information about soils—their

uses, potentials, and limitations. This

paper examines not only the history of

soil surveys for soil conservation, but

also the relationship of the national soil

survey program to the broader soil

conservation movement.

Soluble Salts: Land Use and

Land Degradation

Soil survey cooperators have

selected 1899 as the year in which the

soil survey effort began in earnest. In

1899, the Division of Soils (which had

been established in USDA as the

Division of Agricultural Soils in 1894)

sent soil surveyors to work in four

locations—Cecil County, Maryland, the

Connecticut Valley, the Salt Lake

Valley of Utah, and the Pecos Valley of

New Mexico. At that time, there was a

great deal yet to be learned about the

science of the soil and its response to

management. The ability to map and

classify soils and to measure

characteristics had to grow apace with

the ability of scientists to make

meaningful interpretations for land

users. In the realm of interpretations for

soil conservation and good land use,

perhaps the most accurate and

financially valuable interpretation the

early soil surveyors could make rested

on their ability to identify soluble salts

in the soil and water of Western states.

The information could help guide the

development of irrigation projects. In

irrigated areas in dry climates, soluble

salts accumulated and crusted on the

surface through capillary action and

evaporation. Often, the salts also

became concentrated in a raised water

table. Both conditions restricted plant

growth but could often be corrected by

The Early Soil Survey: Engine for

the Soil Conservation Movement ... 1

Wait Just One Minute! Where Do

You Stand? ..................................... 5

Soil Centennial Song .......................... 7

A Soil Survey Centennial

Proclamation .................................. 8
2

NCSS Newsletter

a drainage system that permitted water

to flush the salts down through the soil

profile and into the drainage system.

Identification of the potential problem

called for added expense that needed to

be calculated in the cost of opening

land to agriculture. By the time the soil

survey began, Eugene W. Hilgard of the

University of California had described

most of the processes leading to white

and black alkali. His prescription for

reclamation through a drainage system

for leaching, augmented by applications

of gypsum for the black alkali,

corrected many situations. Lyman

Briggs, the bureau’s soil physicist, and

Thomas Means and Frank Gardner,

early surveyors in the West, built on the

work of Hilgard in developing methods

to identify soluble salts.

Local residents or land agents

sometimes voiced displeasure with

surveys that pointed out the limitations

of soils for particular uses. In 1899,

Milton Whitney, first head of the soil

survey, sent Thomas H. Means and

Frank D. Gardner to survey the valley

of the Pecos River at the invitation of

local land developers. Their report

suggested that, with a drainage system

for the alkali problem, farmers could

raise alfalfa for livestock but that a

combination of soil, water, and climate

made the area unsuited to vegetables

and fruit crops. The Pecos Irrigation

and Improvement Company, which was

then advertising the area as truck crop

and orchard land, requested and

received an investigation by the Office

of the Secretary of Agriculture into the

Pecos Valley report. The report largely

exonerated Whitney.

Some of the early Bureau of

Reclamation projects suffered for lack

of attention to soil issues, including

alkali problems. Farmers on

reclamation projects led the call for

greater attention to soil when they

testified to the Fact Finding

Commission of 1923-1924 that

repayments should be based in part on

differences in soil productivity. The soil

survey was a valuable tool in selecting

Western lands for agriculture.

Identifying Soil Erosion Phases

and Promoting Soil

Conservation

The Bureau of Soils (previously the

Division of Soils) furthered the

awareness of soil erosion as a problem

facing American agriculture. The

bureau was also active in the wider

progressive conservation movement

through William John McGee, one of

the major scientific figures in the

Federal Government in the 19th and

early 20th centuries. When McGee

joined the Bureau of Soils in 1907,

Milton Whitney, the chief of the bureau,

placed him in charge of the unit “Soil

Erosion Investigations.” The largely

self-taught McGee was already a man

of importance in the infant conservation

movement when he joined the bureau.

At various times he listed his

occupations as geologist, ethnologist,

anthropologist, and hydrologist. He had

justifiable claims to all of those titles.

The son of an Irish immigrant

farmer, McGee was born on April 17,

1853, near Farley in Dubuque County,

Iowa. He left school at 14 but benefited

from tutoring in Latin, German,

mathematics, and astronomy by an

older brother who had attended college.

He learned blacksmithing and built and

sold agricultural implements, when not

exploring the countryside with his

brothers. In 1878, he published papers

on glacial drift and prehistoric burial

mounds. From 1877 to 1881, he carried

out his own topographic and geological

survey of 12,000 square miles in

northeastern Iowa and published “The

Pleistocene History of Northeastern

Iowa.”

John Wesley Powell hired McGee as

a permanent employee of the U.S.

Geological Survey in 1883, where he

published the first generalized geologic

map of the United States. McGee

followed Powell to the Bureau of

American Ethnology when Powell

became director in 1893. McGee

eventually published some 30 reports

on native peoples from 1894 to 1903.

He was appointed to the Bureau of

Soils following a stint as director the St.

Louis Public Museum. Whitney

recommended McGee to the Secretary

of Agriculture on March 22, 1907, for

the “purpose of enabling the bureau to

take up the important study of soil

erosion or wash, and sedimentation

which has not hitherto been fully

investigated for inability to obtain a

man with the necessary training and

attainments.” 1

 Whitney informed the

Secretary that McGee had only recently

been appointed by President Theodore

Roosevelt to the Inland Waterways

Commission, where he would be

working with the Forest Service, with

the Engineering Department of the

Army, and with the Hydrographic

Service of the Department of the

Interior. This position would afford

McGee an “opportunity to push these

investigations with the assistance and

advice from these other branches of the

Government service, whose work is

really dependent upon and made

necessary to a large extent, by the

erosion of the soil.” 2 His grasp of the

interrelated nature of resources was

advanced for the time. As a member of

the waterways commission, he pushed

for a natural resources conference.

Finding that the Lakes-to-the-Gulf

Deep Waterways Association planned

to call together a score or more

governors for a conference restricted to

1W.J. McGee Personnel File, Selected

Personnel Files, RG 16, NA. 2Milton Whitney to Secretary of Agriculture,

March 22, 1907, W.J. McGee Personnel File,

Selected Personnel Files, RG 16, NA.
3

NCSS Newsletter

waterways improvement needs and

water resources development, McGee

and his colleagues won President

Theodore Roosevelt’s pledge to call a

Conference of Governors on

Conservation of Natural Resources.

McGee, while employed in the Bureau

of Soils, and Gifford Pinchot, chief of

the Forest Service, shaped the

conference. Pinchot helped organize the

conference held at the White House in

May 1908 but recalled that it was

McGee “who pulled the laboring oar”

(Pinchot, 1947). The governors were

allowed to speak briefly, but the

substance of the published proceedings

rested on the presentations by the

experts in resources, whom McGee had

selected. The conference, along with

the published volume of speeches,

which called attention to the need for

conservation, was a seminal event in the

history of the conservation movement.

Pinchot’s assessment of McGee’s status

in the conservation movement was

unqualified: “W.J. McGee was the

scientific brains of the Conservation

movement all through its early critical

stages” (Pinchot, 1947). The historian

Samuel Hays, who examined what he

termed the “progressive conservation

movement” spanning 1890-1920,

concurred, calling McGee the “chief

theorist of the conservation movement”

(Hays, 1959).

McGee acquired his interest in

erosion during his studies for the U.S.

Geological Survey. While studying

erosion as a geological process, he

became a prescient observer of humaninduced, accelerated erosion. In

studying Mississippi’s coastal plain, he

found soils “adapted to distinct crops

and special modes of tillage; and they

are differently affected by old-field

erosion, which has already wrought

lamentable destruction in different

portions of the coastal plain, and is

progressing with ever-increasing

rapidity” (McGee, 1892). McGee also

produced a Bureau of Soils bulletin on

soil erosion that was the bureau’s most

complete treatment of the issue at that

point. During the later part of his

career, McGee studied ground water, or

what he called subsoil water. The

bulletins that were published after his

death correctly identified the need to

view soils and water resources as a unit.

McGee is not remembered for his

Bureau of Soils ground water bulletins,

mainly because they set forth theories

of capillary action, hydrology, and

water cycle and consumption that

further scientific investigation has

found wanting. But McGee remains a

central figure among Federal employees

in the progressive conservation

movement. He was still employed in the

bureau when he died on September 4,

1912, in his quarters at the Cosmos

Club.

McGee’s prestige brought attention

to the bureau’s role in soil conservation,

but he by no means originated it. A

cadre of young soil scientists concerned

about the effects of soil erosion

developed in the early Bureau of Soils.

Published soil surveys increasingly

referred to soil erosion and the need for

soil conservation, along with some

suggested lines of action. The early soil

surveyors had taken notice of soil

erosion from the beginning of their

work, both as a factor of soil

classification and of soil management

recommendations. They were

developing what we now call the soil

type, soil bodies that share significant

soil properties. Soil surveyors began

seeing separations based on erosion.

Clarence W. Dorsey surveyed the area

around Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in

1900 and described Hagerstown clay:

“These soils may be said to be the

Hagerstown loam from which the top

covering of loam has been removed,

exposing the clay subsoil....” (Dorsey,

1901). Jay A. Bonsteel, who surveyed

St. Marys County, Maryland, the same

year, noted that cultivating slopes of

Leonardtown loam resulted in “scalds

or washes” which needed permanent

sod (Bonsteel, 1901). Bonsteel, while

jointly serving as Professor of Soil

Investigations at Cornell University

early in the century, examined the socalled worn-out soils around Ithaca.

Like Whitney and others of the period,

Bonsteel was among the ranks of those

questioning Justus Liebig’s theory that

repeated cropping diminished the

available plant food in the topsoil.

Bonsteel believed that many farmers

around Ithaca cultivated a subsoil far

different from the topsoil cultivated by

their ancestors. The stone fences where

the topsoil lodged provided the

evidence. Reacting perhaps too strongly

to Liebig’s thesis, he averred that

erosion was “one of the agencies totally

destroying the validity of the hypothesis

of soil deterioration by removal of

crops.” Further, he cited the effects of

wind erosion in the Northeast as a

“greatly underestimated” factor in the

alteration of the soil (Bonsteel, 1905).

In 1910, the surveyors began to

identify “eroded” phases of established

soil types. As the soil survey matured, it

adopted a nomenclature that grouped

soil types into a soil series. The series

combined a place name followed by a

texture designation, as in Jordan sandy

loam. In time, the surveyors added

slope and degree to the soil type

designation. In 1911, surveyors

identified a large area of “Rough

Gullied Land” in Fairfield County,

South Carolina.

Hugh Hammond Bennett, who had

joined the soil survey in 1903, began to

relate recommendations to particular

soil types. For instance, concerning

Orangeburg sandy loam of Lauderdale

County, Mississippi, he wrote, “If the

gentler slopes are not terraced and the

steep situations kept in timber, deep

gorgelike gullies or ‘caves’ gradually

encroach upon cultivated fields,
4

NCSS Newsletter

eventually bringing about a topographic

situation too broken for other than

patch cultivation” (Bennett et al.,

1912). Bennett’s The Soils and

Agriculture of the Southern States

highlighted erosion and advised that

some soil types were unsuitable for

cultivation or in need of conservation

measures if used for agriculture

(Bennett, 1921). Later, when Bennett

was head of the Soil Conservation

Service, he and his colleagues used

susceptibility to erosion as a key

element in the land capability

classification system.

In time, Bennett became the most

recognizable link between the soil

conservation movement and the early

Bureau of Soils. Rather than being a

lone voice, Bennett was in fact among

compatriots. Though not mentioning

McGee specifically, Bennett made clear

the importance of atmosphere in the

Bureau of Soils, created in part by

McGee. Bennett, a half century after

the event, recalled that it was Thomas

Nelson Chamberlain’s paper on “Soil

Wastage,” delivered at the conference

of governors in 1908, that “fixed my

determination to pursue that subject to

some possible point of counteraction”

(Bennett, 1959).

One of Bennett’s college classmates,

Royall Oscar Eugene Davis, a chemist

in the Bureau of Soils, wrote bulletins

titled Soil Erosion in the South and

Economic Waste From Soil Erosion, as

well as a bulletin on a different type of

soil degradation, The Effect of Soluble

Salts on the Physical Properties of

Soils. While the bulletins by McGee,

Bennett, and Davis gave water erosion

preeminence as a conservation concern,

E.E. Free produced a classic treatment

of wind erosion in The Movement of

Soil Material by Wind.

Franklin Hiram King’s pioneering

work in soil management addressed soil

conservation and maintenance in a

broad sense, not just for the purpose of

halting erosion. In 1894, before joining

the Bureau of Soils, he had written a

Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment

Station bulletin on wind erosion and its

amelioration. King left the bureau over

a dispute with Whitney. Whitney

believed that most soils had sufficient

fertility for continuous and

undiminished crop production, whereas

King had demonstrated the value of soil

amendments to increase production.

Whitney added a disclaimer to one of

King’s Bureau of Soils bulletins, and

King had to publish some of his soil

management bulletins privately after

leaving the bureau. King nevertheless

remained a very active, innovative soil

scientist and earned a reputation as one

of the pioneering soil physicists in the

United States. He studied his favorite

topic, soil management, in China,

where he wrote Farmers of Forty

Centuries: Or, Permanent Agriculture

in China, Korea and Japan. Decades

later, the book so impressed Robert

Rodale, proponent of organic farming,

that his Rodale Press reprinted the 1911

publication.

Expanding Soil Conservation

Research

The Bureau of Soils ventured once

again into soil erosion research in the

late 1920’s and unleashed the energies

of some staff interested in the topic. It

is probable that a change in leadership

partially accounts for the reinvigorated

interest in soil erosion. A.G. McCall

replaced Whitney as chief of the bureau

in 1927 and remained in charge of soil

investigations when the bureau was

merged into the Bureau of Chemistry

and Soils with Henry G. Knight as

chief.

Understanding and measuring the

properties related to erosion held great

promise for devising soil conservation

practices. Working in the laboratory in

the late 1920’s, H.E. Middleton of the

Bureau of Chemistry and Soils

analyzed soils from various points

around the country and made

substantial progress toward

understanding the complex chemical

and physical properties and processes

related to erodibility. Simultaneously,

Hugh Hammond Bennett was gradually

moving his campaign for soil

conservation beyond the confines of the

soil survey division to educate the

public and politicians through writing

and speaking engagements. He had

identified areas where the combination

of geography and agricultural systems

caused serious erosion. As a first step in

attacking the problem, he wanted

research on erosion conditions and

conservation measures. Based largely

on his campaign, Congress authorized a

series of soil erosion experiment

stations. Bennett selected the locations

for the stations, where interdisciplinary

teams of researchers established plots

to measure erosion conditions under

different types of crops, soils, and

rotations and various agricultural

management practices and structures. A

few state experiment station staff

members had carried out similar

experiments, but the Federal impetus

led eventually to an accumulation of

national data on the erodibility of soils.

The origin of the erodibility data that

currently supports conservation

planning tools, such as the Universal

(and Revised) Soil Loss Equation,

stretches back to these pioneering

studies.

With the creation of the Soil

Conservation Service in 1935 and

with Bennett as its first chief, the

interpretation of soils for soil and water

conservation was firmly established.

 But Bennett’s success was not the

genesis of soil conservation and soil

survey connections. Rather, he had built

upon an earlier awareness in the Bureau

of Soils of how the soil survey might

help to conserve the Nation’s soils.
5

NCSS Newsletter

References

Bennett, Hugh H., et al. 1912. “Soil

Survey of Lauderdale County,

Mississippi.” In Field Operations of

the Bureau of Soils, 1910, pp.733-

784. Washington, D.C.: Government

Printing Office.

Bennett, Hugh H. 1921. The Soils and

Agriculture of the Southern States.

New York: The MacMillan

Company.

Bennett, Hugh H. 1959. The Hugh

Bennett Lectures. Raleigh: The

Agricultural Foundation, Inc., North

Carolina State College.

Bonsteel, Jay A. 1901. “Soil Survey of

St. Marys County, Maryland.” In

Field Operations of the Division of

Soils, 1900, pp. 125-145.

Washington, D.C.: Government

Printing Office.

Bonsteel, Jay A. 1905. “Worn Out

Soils.” In Bureau of Farmers’

Institutes and Normal Institutes.

Report for the Year 1904. Albany,

New York: Brandow Printing

Company.

Dorsey, Clarence W. 1901. “A Soil

Survey Around Lancaster,

Pennsylvania.” In Field Operations

of the Division of Soils, 1900, pp.

61-84. Washington, D.C.:

Government Printing Office.

Hays, Samuel P. 1959. Conservation

and the Gospel of Efficiency: The

Progressive Conservation

Movement, 1890-1920. Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Harvard University

Press.

McGee, W.J. 1892. “Report of Mr. W.J.

McGee.” In Thirteenth Annual

Report of the U.S. Geological

Survey to the Secretary of the

Interior. 1891-1892. Part 1.

Washington, D.C.: Government

Printing Office.

Pinchot, Gifford. 1947. Breaking New

Ground. Washington, D.C.: Island

Press. 

Wait Just One Minute!

Where Do You Stand?

By Dick Arnold, Senior Soil Scientist,

Natural Resources Conservation Service,

Washington, D.C.

We are close to arriving. It is thearrival of the end of a time

period—a year is passing; a decade is

ending. A century ticks away, and a

millennium will soon flash by. There is

sadness because of the speed with

which days rush by; there is joy

because tomorrow’s dawn is bright and

full of promise.

I look back on 50 years of

association with the National

Cooperative Soil Survey with complete

astonishment. It seems only a while ago

that I was a student trainee with the Soil

Conservation Service in southern Iowa

and people were teaching me about

augers and spades, aerial photos and

alidades, landscapes and parent

materials, and soils and how to

recognize them as specific components

within map units. Now, five decades

later, I often wonder about some of the

marvelous things I was introduced to in

the beginning.

There are many new questions—

usually more philosophical. For

example, what is the need and meaning

of a basic unit? Is there one for

classifying and another one for

mapping? Is there a law or set of

principles that can help us explain and

devise systems of information that

improve our understanding while

contributing to the storehouse of

scientific knowledge? What seems to

remain as a constant is the uncertainty

with which we assimilate the facts

about our beloved pedosphere.

Struggling to See Ahead

I want to tell you about some events

that are actively affecting the geoderma,

the pedosphere, the world out there that

has such a difficult time making inroads

into the psyche of our culture, our

department, our agency, and our people.

A committee has been looking at the

future and its implications for the

structure, function, and response of our

agency in the years ahead.

I know your horizons are not limited

by the edges of a pedon, or even a

polypedon, but I don’t know if you see

the stars in the sky at night and think

about the names, the myths, and the

support that the incomprehensible

universe has provided numerous

generations before ours. I don’t know if

the rising sun and its steady march

across the sky until the last rays of the

day’s sunset cause you to ponder the

majesty of music and literature

throughout the world that draws its

sustenance from this daily event. I hope

that your horizons are not limited by the

physical constraints of yonder skyline

or by the lack of curiosity about what

lies just beyond.

I’d like to share with you a

viewpoint about our efforts as

visionaries striving to “see beyond the

obvious.” The obvious deals with

erratic events of weather and

agriculture, elections and the power of

politics, a sense of tomorrow with its

nearsightedness and short-term gains

and losses, and the frustrations of

budgeting, down sizing, marketing,

partnering, survival, and image

building. For me the obvious is here,

but it is not a useful guide for
6

NCSS Newsletter

positioning the world on a better

track.

At the core of what lies ahead is the

concept of “sustainability.” This

concept represents many things to many

people, and there must be a thousand

reports on all facets of it. Put simply,

sustainability is humankind’s need for

harmony with this planet called Earth.

Many an earlier culture saw sanctity in

Nature—a sacredness of belonging, of

being a part and a partner. They had a

sense of togetherness, of harmony, and

of a future that was undefined and

indeterminable. Sustainability in this

context is far, far beyond the daily

troubles and struggles each of us face,

isn’t it? Even if the concept does not

touch directly on religion, it does

envelop values and principles, ethics

and morality. A sustainable Earth in

which humans are merely components,

important ones, but only components in

a chain of events whose millennia are

unnumbered is something that lies far

beyond the obvious.

I don’t have answers or solutions.

Rather, I have this opportunity to

mention what I call “global driving

forces” and relate them to some

international conservation concerns.

Your list is likely better, and you can

expand it as you see fit. I have selected

five driving forces that I believe will

influence the world so much that their

ramifications will markedly affect the

United States in the years ahead or will

dictate major changes in how and when

policies are promulgated. The five are

population growth, food production and

distribution, poverty, land degradation,

and climate change.

Driving Forces

Population growth is so fast in some

parts of the world that people

attempting to manage limited resources

are pushed beyond their current

capacity. A younger and younger

population all too often is less skilled in

the knowledge necessary to cope,

thereby setting in motion potentially

disastrous consequences. There are no

easy answers or solutions, just some

potentially scary impacts if we continue

to do nothing.

The production and distribution of

food may seem closer to home because

we have lots of prime farmland, have

good range and pasture lands, and our

forest reserves seem pretty secure. We

grow, process, package, and market

food products as varied as there are

imaginations. In some countries the

basic food is still grain, or simple grain

products, with only a glimmer of hope

of protein from meat. Is our food

production sustainable? By what

definition? What level of inputs are

needed now, next year, next decade,

and how might it change in the future?

Three centuries from now there might

be a different perspective. How can soil

science help? Do we know the

limitations and resilience of our soil

resources?

The distribution of food has been

called a cause for starvation and

malnutrition in some countries because

statistically there are enough supplies to

provide adequate nutrition for all. So

why isn’t it so? Why must we continue

to produce lesser minds and bodies to

populate the next society of humans? Is

it politics? Is it unbridled economic

development? Is it the haves and the

have-nots? What conditions must

prevail for economic thresholds to be

lowered? Is nutritious food not only a

basic human need but also right?

Ouch. Poverty is something we don’t

like to hear much about. Sure there’s a

little poverty down the road, at the

other end of town, or way out in the

rural areas. Watch your television; see

places that have no sanitary facilities,

no clean water to drink, or cook with,

or bathe in. See the bloated bellies of

kids and those sunken sad eyes staring

into nowhere. Poverty usually means

lack of hope, lack of resources, lack of

support, lack of jobs, lack of

opportunities to grow and prosper. And

if you have almost nothing, how do you

become a productive world citizen?

Civil unrest is all too often a likely

companion of the downtrodden, the

dispossessed, the hopeless.

Land degradation is something with

which we are more comfortable.

Certainly, a half-century of saving land

for tomorrow’s children has given us a

legacy of understanding stewardship—a

concept yet to dominate land

management in our country. Land care

programs, as products of governments,

seem to make important strides in

turning the tide of past land abuse.

Individuals in the Peace Corps and

NGO’s (nongovernmental

organizations) have numerous stories of

success—but the progress is not fast

enough or in enough places to stem the

tide of potential disaster in some foodproducing areas. Do you know how to

create new soils that are better than the

existing ones? What are the criteria?

What is the cost? Where do you stand?

Climate change is a driving force

that is always here. It has triggered

major geologic events. It has forced

prior cultures to disappear, forced

people to leave their homes and

dissipate like snow in the wind. The big

thing this time isn’t that CO2

 will

increase and influence the warming of

the Earth (the Earth has been there

before). What seems to be significant

this time is the rapidity with which

change is occurring, and by most

reports the problem is exacerbated by

modern society and its dependence on

fossil fuels to support its everincreasing demand for energy. The

industrial revolution initiated numerous

technological advances that each of us

enjoy today. But—as thermodynamics

Arnold continued on page 9
7

NCSS Newsletter

Soil Centennial Song

This song was written by Charles Hibner and presented with guitar accompaniment at the

beginning of the wrap-up session for the Santa Fe Soil Survey Field Review on October 7, 1999. It

was written in celebration of our Soil Survey Centennial.

For the last 100 years we have been mapping soils. We’ve mapped them from the mountains to the sea.

In heat and cold, as we grow old, they have become our toils.

We’ll keep on looking for that Bt.

Some started out as Desert Soils back in the early days.

And though they aged less than a hundred years,

they became Durargids, then Argidurids, somewhere along the way.

If they change again, it may bring us all to tears.

Oh but how I love working with those soils.

It’s about the best job that there is around.

You work in the fresh air, and you haven’t got a care.

You’re at home in that hole dug in the ground.

The survey team dug out the pits for every soil pedon.

They worked very hard to get them wide and deep.

They were all scribed, as they described, the features that are on

that profile whether on gentle slopes or steep.

Oh but how they love working with those soils.

It’s about the best job that there is around.

They work in the fresh air, and they haven’t got a care.

They’re at home in that hole dug in the ground.

The MO office’s review team looked at all these pits.

They made some notes and put in a word or two.

Others had their say and along the way, it all began to fit,

as we made adjustments to make the soils true.

Oh but how they love working with those soils.

It’s about the best job that there is around.

They worked in the fresh air, and they didn’t have a care.

They were at home in that hole dug in the ground.

So now I hope the next 100 years are as good as the last.

As we learn to map soils better than ever before,

we’ll have our fun working in the Sun, and always have a blast,

as field reviews go on forevermore.

Oh but how we love working with those soils.

It’s about the best job that there is around.

We work in the fresh air, and we haven’t got a care.

We’re at home in that hole dug in the ground. 
8

NCSS Newsletter

Great Seal of the State of Nebraska to

be affixed this Sixth day of October, in

the year of our Lord One Thousand

Nine Hundred and Ninety-Nine.

Attest: Signed by Secretary of State

Scott Moore and Governor Mike

Johanns

State of Nebraska

Proclamation

WHEREAS, Soils are crucial to the

economic life and well-being of

Nebraska and have vital functions—

including food and fiber production and

carbon sequestration—as well as being

the base for our homes, shopping

centers, schools and industries; and

WHEREAS, The understanding of

soil is essential to good management

and to building resources for the future.

It is a wise investment to maintain and

improve our knowledge of soils; and

WHEREAS, The National

Cooperative Soil Survey Program is a

partnership led by the Natural

Resources Conservation Service of

federal land management agencies,

state agricultural experiment stations

and local units of government that

provide soil information; and

WHEREAS, Each state in the United

States has selected a state soil.

Nebraska established Holdrege silt

loam as its official state soil; and

A Soil Survey Centennial

Proclamation

By Nathan McCaleb, State Soil Scientist,

Natural Resources Conservation Service,

Lincoln, Nebraska.

On October 6, 1999, MikeJohanns, Governor of

Nebraska, signed a proclamation

designating 1999 as the “Year of the

Soil Survey Centennial.”

Representatives of the United States

Department of Agriculture, Natural

Resources Conservation Service, and

the Nebraska Natural Resources

Commission were present at the

ceremony. Following is the text of the

proclamation:

WHEREAS, 1999 marks the 100th

anniversary of soil surveys

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Mike

Johanns, Governor of the State of

Nebraska, DO HEREBY PROCLAIM

the year 1999, as

YEAR OF THE SOIL SURVEY

CENTENNIAL

In Nebraska, and I do hereby urge all

municipalities, counties, health

departments, planners and developers

to use soil surveys in land use planning

decisions.

I also hereby urge the Natural

Resources Conservation Service to

complete the modernization of

Nebraska soil surveys according to

federal appropriations and mandates

and provide the Geographic

Information System databases to the

Nebraska Natural Resources

Commission.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have

hereunto set my hand, and cause the

The Nebraska State Governor introduces key leaders of the Soil Survey Program in Nebraska.

From left to right: Nathan McCaleb, NRCS State Soil Scientist; Dayle Williamson,

Director of the Nebraska Natural Resources Commission; Governor Mike Johanns; Mark

Kuzila, Director of the Conservation and Survey Division at the University of Nebraska in

Lincoln; Steve Chick, NRCS State Conservationist; and Gary Muckel, NRCS, National Soil

Survey Center.
9

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all

its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex,

religion, age, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, or marital or family

status. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities

who require alternative means for communication of program information

(Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET Center at

(202) 720-2600 (voice and TDD).

To file a complaint of discrimination, write USDA, Director, Office of Civil

Rights, Room 326-W, Whitten Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW,

Washington, D.C. 20250-9410 or call (202) 720-5964 (voice and TDD).

USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

NCSS Newsletter

suggests—you cannot get something for

nothing. The balance, the harmony, the

cycling and renewal patterns have been

disturbed, and, while trying to reach

again a dynamic equilibrium, we are

partners and victims of this huge, huge

uncontrolled global experiment. If we

can’t stop it, can we mitigate the

changes?

There are fascinating scenarios for

us to spin about where, when, and how

much change might occur. The

pedosphere is the “excited skin,” the

geomembrane of the terrestrial

ecosystems, the source of functions that

sustain us and make our environment

tolerable for human habitation. Where

could we do triple cropping? Can

multiple cropping be a useful

complement to the multinational

monoculture operations that seem to

take over? How do you predict failure

thresholds of soils, and what is the

sequence in which such failures might

occur? Can we make “anthropogenic”

soils that give us a time window on

sustainability?

Conservation Issues

I’ve tried to give you an idea of

driving forces that will change the

world we have known. Humankind has

been evident as a problem but is also

the solution. The uncertainty of the

limits of our brains gives us optimism

for the future. There are lots of things

to consider as we imagine the

conservation issues facing the world in

the next few decades or centuries. Let

me mention a few:

• increasing number of people

• food supplies; food safety;

food security

• demand for and supply of

energy

• health

• poverty

• jobs and training

• education—present and

lifelong

• declining productivity; land

degradation; soil quality

• loss of biodiversity

• water supply—quantity and

quality

• energy conservation;

resource recycling

• resource access; land tenure

• women’s role in society;

world organizations

• international aid;

international research

• world negotiations,

protocols, and treaties

• sustainability

• desertification

• persistent organics

• fisheries

• forests

• greenhouse emissions

• trade agreements; trade

organizations

• standards for almost

everything; the ISO’s

And Then

Some futurists believe that as voice

recognition computers become more

available, people will talk more and

write less. They think we will develop

into an oral-aural society where speech

can be translated easily and we can

readily interact and be understood by

people who speak and read other

languages, thereby becoming more like

a global community. Literacy and

illiteracy would take on rather new

meanings as we depend less on the

written word. Others believe that the

written word will continue to be

important for a long time to come

because it enables us to refine and

sharpen our thoughts and ideas and to

enjoy the beauty and emotion of such

thoughts.

Sustainable development can only be

a product of human endeavor, and,

insofar as you are human, you can think

about it, care about it, discuss it, and act

upon it. Governments are generally

designed to be for the good of the

people of a country, a nation, or a

region. Maybe a world government

could have the interests of a world and

all of its component parts as its major

responsibility.

Just maybe you start with a little

horizon in a little pit and let it take you

where it will. As I reflect for a moment,

I realize that I did and I have been most

fortunate. 

Arnold continued from page 1