A comprehensive soil resource inventory is being conducted in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) and has been underway for six years. The GSMNP is located in Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina and is approximately 210,000 hectares. The National Park Service is a unique clinet that has special needs from a soil resource inventory. The amount of scientific research being conducted in a wide range of different areas in the GSMNP is immense. The majority of this research has some connection to the soils found in the park. The task of the soil scientists working in the park is to understand the needs of not only these scientific researchers, but also Park Service managers that are charged with monitoring and protecting all of the Park's resources. Through the interactions with these scientists and managers, the soil scientists working on this project have devloped a soil/landscape modeling approach to the actual inventorying process and have developed an extensive on-site data set related to the soils found in the GSMNP. This modeling process and data collection was developed from a fully field-based approached to the science of inventorying soils. The soil/landscape models along with the accompanying data will provide the scientists and managers working in the GSMNP the information they need to address their research and management concerns for years to come.
See more of Innovative Approaches for Soil Mapping
See more of S05 Pedology
See more of The ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meetings (November 6-10, 2005)