The Major Land Resource Area Soil
Survey Region Office 11 (MO11) has responsibility for three Land Resource Regions (LRR): Northern Lake States Forest and Forage Region
(K); Lake States
Fruit, Truck, and Dairy Region (L); and Central Feed Grains and
Livestock Region (M). These LRR’s include portions of:
Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and
Wisconsin.
Federal soil survey activities in the
United States began almost one hundred years ago. Most soil surveys
were large scale and general in nature or were single purpose
surveys such as those made for conservation planning. In 1952, the
Soil Conservation Service (SCS) was assigned leadership
responsibility for the production of soil surveys on private lands.
In the 1960’s SCS began what is thought of as the “modern era” of
soil surveys. Modern soil surveys were designed for multiple
purposes and were prepared on a photographic base under the auspices
of Soil Taxonomy. This effort to obtain soil surveys on all lands
was done in conjunction with other state, local, and federal
agencies. The agencies involved make up the National Cooperative
Soil Survey.
The last 30 years have seen little change
made in the soil survey program. The emphasis has been on
production: mapping, describing, correlating, classifying, and
publishing. Within Region 11, soil surveys have been completed on
about 99.5 percent of private lands and about 75 percent of these
surveys have been published. These data, primarily gathered on a
county by county basis by many hands, reflect what was known about
soils at the time of the survey. The older survey reports remain an
excellent source of information, but many have become outdated to
varying degrees as new information is gained and as demographics,
technologies, environmental questions, and intensities of land use
change. |