I want to data for the soil hydrologic class for the Central Valley in California. Although I can see what I want in the living atlas: Portal -> Living Atlas -> USGS SSURGO -> Soil hydrologic Group, I cannot seem to figure out how to download and assemble that layer in ArcGIS pro as a shapefile or raster data? There seem to be two main ways of accessing SSURGO data. I have tried both for one county just to see if I could get it to work but failed. Ultimately I would want this for 8 counties in the Central Valley...
Web soil survey
https://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/WebSoilSurvey.aspx
SSURGO Downloader
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=cdc49bd63ea54dd2977f3f2853e07fff
The value for hydrologic group is derived from the gSSURGO map unit aggregated attribute table field Hydrologic Group - Dominant Conditions (hydgrpdcd).
The Soil Units layer contains the hydgrpdcd attribute in there. Most units have a value, but you can filter out those which have a Null value in the field easily enough.
https://github.com/ncss-tech/SSURGOOnDemandArcPro
The most current SSURGO data is available at Web Soil Survey. The data can be downloaded by Area of Interest (AOI) or by county. SSURGO data is also available for download as file geodatabases in CONUS or by State. The file geodatabases are created after Web Soil Survey updates in October of every year. There is gSSURGO and gNATSGO. The file geodatabases contain raster, feature classes, and attribute tables. Join the MUAGGATT table by MUKEY for the hydrologic group.
I just recently went thru something similar and reached out to NRCS about how to best export the soil types I need. I uploaded my shapefile AOI (area of interest) to the Web Soil Survey (that you linked above) and exported the soil geometry and all associated tables. I then added the shapefile to my Pro project and joined to the tables I needed. Tables come in an access database and the readme includes instructions on how to prep the access db, then find the table you need and import to pro and join to shapefile.
Or you can try using this NRCS custom toolbox within Pro to extract the data you need - worked pretty well and a bit simpler than using the access db: https://github.com/ncss-tech/SSURGO-On-Demand-Pro-table
Here's an excerpt from the email from NRCS explaining the toolbox and info about an additional python tool (my python knowledge is not advanced enough so I didn't try that):
"If you indeed are after soil properties and interpretations, you can use the SSURGO On-Demand ArcGIS Pro – toolbox found at this link. To use these tools, use the SAPOLYGON (soil survey area polygons) to grab soil properties and interpretations via Soil Data Access for all map units in the selected soil survey areas. Currently, this tool will only return the results as a table and you will have to join to your polygon or raster layer by mukey manually.
If you are brave, there is a pure python solution, pysda, found at this link. This tool leverages pandas/geopandas. It’s a solution that is very much under development and hasn’t had much real world testing, so feel free to give it a spin if it sounds interesting to you. Check out the python notebooks for examples."
Hope that helps!
The soil units I want are Hydrologic classes and I don't see how select those...?
Try just selecting the soil units you want, then right-click the layer in Contents and click Data → Export Features. Does that work for you?
https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=06e5fd61bdb6453fb16534c676e1c9b9
Josh:
Is there a Living Atlas URL to access a Soil service that you could use as-is in a web application instead of downloading the data onto a local server?
Yes I tried that too and it seems like it is working but it generates empty output...?
I can clip the feature layer, but as I mentioned, I don't think you can do with w/ the Living Atlas' raster layers. I clipped the Soil Units feature layer without issue.
Hi Josh,
Thank you for your reply. Yes - that is exactly what I want to do clip the Living atlas layer but the living atlas layer does not seem to be 'clippable' so that is why I was searching for a downloadable raster or shapefile. I have tried using the clip raster tool with the living atlas layer but it fails (see image). Can you clip the living atlas layer?
You can get the SSURGO data here by state which would be a much smaller file so I am trying to do that but I guess you have to join attribute tables to see the soil hydrologic class?
https://nrcs.app.box.com/v/soils
Is there a reason you need the file downloaded locally rather than using the Living Atlas layer directly?
Regardless, if you're working with a Feature Layer (you'd have to use the Soil Units layer, rather than the hydro group imagery layer), you can interactively select the features in your area and just export them.
Or if you have your 8 counties, you could clip the soil units by those features and export that to a shapefile.
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