Southern Highlands and Mississippi Valley Major Land Resource Area Office 16

Major Land Resource Area Office 16 (MO-16) located in Little Rock, Arkansas, is one of 17 Soil Survey Region Offices serving the National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS) in the United States and its trust territories.  MO-16 consists of 9 Major Land Resource Areas (MLRAs) within the Southern Highlands and Mississippi Valley.  An MLRA is a physiographic region that is similar in climate, topography, water resources, land use, and pattern of soils.

MO-16 provides assistance to project soil survey offices located in Arkansas and portions of Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

MO-16 provides quality assurance, technical guidance and support, and soil technology transfer to NCSS project offices in the region.  MO 16 is committed to producing high-quality soil surveys within the region by completing surveys in those areas not having a soil survey, by coordinating and updating all soil surveys in the region to a common standard across state boundaries, and by exploring new ways to provide soils information to our clients.

MO-16 is divided into 9 MLRAs with 25 active ongoing soil surveys, of which 20 are initial surveys and 5 are updates.  These projects consist of a single county, or in some instances, multiple counties which are subsets of Major Land Resource Areas.   Agriculture Handbook 296, "Land Resource Regions and Major Land Resource Areas of the United States," provides information about MLRAs.

Major Land Resource Areas within MO-16

• 116A –Ozark Highland
• 116B – Springfield Plain
• 116C – St. Francis Knobs and Basin
• 117 – Boston Mountains
• 118 – Arkansas Valley and Ridge
• 119 – Ouachita Mountains
• 131A – Southern Mississippi River Alluvium
• 131B – Arkansas River Alluvium
• 131 C – Red River Alluvium
• 131 D – Southern Mississippi River Terraces
• 133B – Western Coastal Plain
• 134 – Southern Mississippi Valley Loess
• 135B – Cretaceous Western Coastal Plain

Additional Information

• Major Land Resource Areas
• Sharkey Project
• MO-16 Staff
• New Soils Tools
• Lower Mississippi Valley Soil Water Table Study

Last Modified: 03/31/2008

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