Federal Lands Advisory Group (FLAG) Charter

Background

Soil Survey’s are inventories of the nation’s soils and potential natural vegetation and their composition and productivity. This information has proved to be invaluable to our nation. It is used extensively throughout the private and public sectors, and is the foundation for land management activities. Soil Survey information enables conservation to thrive in both the public and private sectors. Soil Survey’s have been completed over the last 105 years through the National Cooperative Soil Survey process and standards. The National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS) has been completed on 2.12 billion acres. The replacement costs of these data are estimated to be about $3 dollars per acre or $6.4 billion dollars.

The soil survey has evolved since 1899 from an emphasis on cropland to a soil survey that must meet many diverse uses. Approximately one third of the published soil surveys are more than 30 years old and another third are more than 20 years old. Soil surveys made 30 or more years ago do not meet today’s needs and today’s soil surveys will likely not meet the needs 20 or 30 years from now. Thus, there is the need to continually maintain and improve our soil surveys. Areas once given little attention like subaqueous soils, rangeland, forestland, wetlands and other wild lands now have critical resource concerns for many programs.

Significant progress has been made, but much remains and many of these lands are intermingled private, Native American and federal, especially in the West, which makes it very inefficient to map only agency or private land areas.