We have attempted to make the Soil Data Mart website easy for you to navigate and find information.
The purpose of this page is to provide you with general information about this site and to help you resolve some
common issues that may be experienced whilst browsing.
If you still need a question answered after having read the information on this page, please see the
Soil Data Mart Contact Us page for information on how to contact us
with your question.
On this page, you will find information on:
The Soil Data Mart's Purpose
The USDA-NRCS Soil Data Mart website has been created to meet provisions in the 2002 Farm Bill.
It provides access to soil information and allows you to:
- Determine where soil tabular and spatial data is available.
- Download data for one soil survey area at a time.
- Download a template Microsoft Access® database for working with downloaded data.
- Generate a variety of reports for one soil survey area at a time.
- Find out who to contact for information about soil data for a particular state.
- "Subscribe" or "unsubscribe" to a soil survey area. A person who is subscribed will automatically be notified whenever data for that soil survey area is updated. You must register and login before doing this.
- It also provides an entry point to allow its pages to be integrated easily into other web sites. Get detailed information.
Citing the Soil Data Mart
A Soil Data Mart citation should be similar to the following:
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Soil Survey Staff, Natural Resources Conservation Service, United States Department of Agriculture. Soil
survey of Jefferson County Area and Part of Silver Bow County, Montana [Online WWW]. Available URL:
“http://soildatamart.nrcs.usda.gov/Survey.aspx?State=MT” [Accessed 29 August 2006].
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Where “Jefferson County Area and Part of Silver Bow County, Montana” is the name in the column titled “Survey Area Name”
at http://soildatamart.nrcs.usda.gov/Survey.aspx?State=MT and “MT” is the state postal code of the state for which that
survey area is listed. By specifying the date accessed the corresponding survey area vintage or version can be determined.
A survey area that spans states is listed for both states, and the corresponding survey area name typically reflects both states.
For such a case, it doesn’t matter which state postal code is reflected in the URL.
Using Mozilla Firefox®, Internet Explorer®, and Netscape Navigator®
In order to view this site, we suggest you use one of the following browsers:
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Mozilla Firefox® version 1.0 or above.
Mozilla Firefox® can be downloaded for free by clicking the logo to the left.
For Macintosh users, the Mac OS version of Firefox is compatible with this website.
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Microsoft Internet Explorer® version 5.0 or above.
Microsoft Internet Explorer® can be downloaded for free by clicking the logo to the left.
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Netscape Navigator® version 4.7 or above.
Netscape Navigator® can be downloaded for free by clicking the logo to the left.
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See Navigating and Using the Soil Data Mart for information about
differences between these browsers with regard to browsing the Soil Data Mart website.
Please note that this site may or may not work with browsers other than those listed above.
JavaScript
This website uses JavaScript extensively to present information and to aid navigation. Netscape Navigator®
users can turn on JavaScript in their browser's preferences menu. Mozilla Firefox® and Microsoft Internet Explorer®
automatically have JavaScript enabled.
Cookies
In order to use this website, your browser must be set up to allow session cookies.
This site uses only temporary session cookies to aid in the navigation process throughout this site.
Note that these cookies are set to automatically expire after three hours of not being used. If this
should happen while you are using our site (perhaps you went to lunch and a long meeting), you might find
that you are redirected back to the "Select State" page once you resume using this website. You might also
be redirected back to the "Select State" page if you attempt to access a page out of order (by using a
Bookmark or Favorite List item or by directly typing in a page's
URL) and the supporting information for filling in the
data on that page is not contained within your session cookie. Please note that the current three hour
expiration time on these session cookies may be reduced in the future depending on site usage and performance.
Pop-up Blockers
This website uses pop-ups to present certain types of information, such as reports. In order to
view this information, any pop-up blocker that you may have should be disabled for this site or
temporarily turned off while browsing this site.
Screen Size
Please note that this site is best viewed with a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels or higher.
Navigating and Using the Soil Data Mart
Each page within this site consists of four different areas:
Header
At the top of each page, you will see a page header. Besides containing links to the
USDA and
NRCS home pages,
this area will also display any state or territory, county or parish, and soil survey
area that you may currently have selected. Note that the page header may not be displayed
at all if the Soil Data Mart is being viewed through another application.
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Navigation Bar
Just below the page header, you will see a navigation bar. This contains links to the various pages
within this website that can always be reached, regardless of any selections that you may or may not
have already made while navigating this site, such as a link to this page. This bar also contains
buttons that you may use to log on or off of our website in order to maintain any desired soil survey
area subscriptions. Note that some links on the navigation bar may not be available
if the Soil Data Mart is being viewed through another application.
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Footer
At the bottom of each page, you will see a page footer. This contains various links to
related pages that are located on other websites, as well as containing a link that you can click
to send e-mail directly to the webmaster for this website. Note that the page footer may not be
displayed at all if the Soil Data Mart is being viewed through another application.
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Contents
Between the navigation bar and the page footer, you will see the actual contents for the page.
The contents will be different for each page, and may appear slightly different between browsers and
browser versions. Note also that there may be slight variations in how a particular item on a page
operates depending on the type of computer that you are using.
Some pages, such as this one, are informational only. Your browser's Back button can be used to return
from these pages to whatever page you were viewing previously. Other pages will ask you to enter information
and then to take some action by pressing a button. In some browsers [Firefox® 1.0 and up,
Internet Explorer® 5.0 and up, and Netscape Navigator® 6.0 and up], some buttons may be ghosted
until required information for taking the action indicated by that button has been entered. In other browsers,
an error message will be displayed if any required information is missing when a button has been clicked.
Entering/Selecting
Most information that you are asked to enter is entered either by typing into a text area, selecting from
a drop down choice list, or by selecting one or more rows from a table. In some browsers [Firefox® 1.0 and up,
Internet Explorer® 5.0 and up, and Netscape Navigator® 6.0 and up], you can find the row(s) you are interested in
by scrolling through the table, and you can select a row in a table by clicking anywhere on the row. If you can
select more than one row, then you can select a range of rows by clicking on the first row and then either dragging
the cursor to the last row while holding the mouse button down or holding the Shift key down while clicking on the
last row. You can then hold the Control key down while you click on individual rows to either add or remove them
from your current set of selected rows. In some of these browsers [Firefox® 1.0 and up and Internet Explorer® 5.5
and up], a row or column can be resized by placing your mouse over its border in the first column for a row or in
the header for a column until the mouse cursor changes to a double error, and then clicking and dragging the border to the
desired width. Note that much of the functionality of the table is implemented through javascript for these browsers.
In other browsers, you can find the row(s) you are interested in by moving through "pages" in the table. If a
table has more than one page, then a list of page numbers will be shown directly under the table. To switch pages,
click on one of the page numbers. To select a row, click in the first column of the row that you wish to select.
If you can select more than one row, click in the first column of each additional row that you wish to select.
Clicking the first column of a row that you have already selected will remove that row from your current set of
selected rows. Note that most of the functionality of the table is implemented through server-side postbacks
rather than client-side javascript for these browsers. This means that the page will need to reload to handle
most of the actions that you take. Column and row resizing is not supported in these browsers.
The page that is displayed when you either log in or subscribe to a soil survey area, contains a table that
lists your subscriptions as well as text areas where you can change your e-mail address and/or password.
You may unsubscribe from individual soil survey areas that are listed in the table. In some browsers
[Firefox® 1.0 and up, Internet Explorer® 5.0 and up, and Netscape Navigator® 6.0 and up], this
table will contain a check box next to each soil survey area that you are currently subscribed to. You can click on
this check box to toggle between it being checked or not. Once you click the "Save All Updates" button, all subscriptions
that were checked will be deleted. In other browsers, this table will contain a button next to each soil survey
area that you are currently subscribed to. You can click on this button to toggle between it telling you that
you are "Subscribed" or that you have indicated that you wish to "Unsubscribe". Note that the page will reload
each time one of these buttons is clicked. Once you click the "Save All Updates" button, all subscriptions
that you have indicated that you wish to "Unsubscribe" from will be deleted.
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