FGDC Soil Data Subcommittee Activities- FY 1997

-- Receive review comments from the public review of the Soil Geographic Data Standard. Based on these comments, a working agenda will be developed to prepare the draft standard to final endorsement by the FGDC as an official standard.

Progress:
During the past year, the subcommittee has concentrated on finalizing the approval of the Soil Geographic Data Standard. It passed through the 90-day public review period with only minor comments that were easily addressed. The standard was formally adopted as an FGDC standard by the Steering Committee at their October 1997 meeting. The standard deals with the standardization of the data element names, definitions, ranges and appropriate choice name terminology used to described soils associated with soil map units and soil map unit components. It is applicable to maps developed by the National Cooperative Soil Survey at map scales from about 1:12k to 1:63k.

Planned Activity 2

-- Begin the development of a standard dealing with soil data from a specific location on the Earth's surface -- point data.

Progress: Due to the length of time consumed by finalizing the endorsement of the above standard, this phase of our work was not started during the year. It will be addressed in 1998.

Jim Fortner
Chair, FGDC Soil Data Subcommittee