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"A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself." Franklin Roosevelt
The soil is among the most basic and valuable of all our natural resources. Soils produce our food and fiber, provide foundations for our structures and support life in our ecosystems. Ever since the devastating days of the Dust Bowl in the 1930's, the Soil Conservation Act of 1935 has made the care and conservation of the soil a national priority. Longstanding cooperative agreements between Conservation Districts, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, state universities and Agricultural Experiment Stations, have helped soil surveys become an important tool in educating people about the soil.
The first step in conserving our soil resource is to promote an understanding and awareness of its importance, uniqueness and extent. This is where soil surveys are important - they help us understand the variety of soils found in the Bitterroot Valley and describe where they occur in relation to climate, vegetation, and landform.
In 1959, a soil survey of the Bitterroot Valley was published by the Soil Conservation Service, now known as the Natural Resources Conservation Service. This survey is only available as a hard copy manuscript and the maps were developed without an aerial photo background, making it difficult to use. Although it was a valuable product in its day, its information is limited and the format of this survey is outdated. The current effort is aimed at updating and adding new documentation to the old soil survey maps to bring the county-wide survey up to the current standards of the National Cooperative Soil Survey program.
The process of updating the soil survey began in 1997. The total land area being updated in the county is approximately 381,900 acres. So far, over half of that area has been updated, mostly in the northern part of the county. The process of updating the survey has generally followed a north to south progression.
The need for a new soil survey in the Bitterroot Valley has been documented by the many requests for soil survey information for the survey area and is important for the following reasons:
- 1959 soil survey was not published with an aerial photo background, making the maps difficult to use
- 1959 soil survey data is not up to current standards
- 1959 soil survey focused primarily on agricultural interpretations - growth of the county has created the need for a broader range of soil land use interpretations
- Increasing demand for digital soil maps and data
- Rapid growth in the Bitterroot Valley has created the need for a more current inventory of the soils and their properties for use in proper development, irrigation management, and agriculture
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