Known Problems and Workarounds
General Issues
Problem |
Explanation/Workaround |
Web Soil Survey doesn’t work if you have popups blocked. |
Web Soil Survey opens various content in a separate browser window (a popup):
- The Home Page opens the Web Soil Survey application in a separate browser window.
- By default, the PDFs created by the Printable Version control
and by Checkout on the Shopping Cart tab are opened in a separate browser window.
- By default, Web Soil Survey opens external links in a separate browser window.
- By default, Web Soil Survey opens the Data Available Status Map PDF in a separate browser window.
In order for this to work, you must allow the Web Soil Survey site (websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov) to open
popup windows.
You may have popup blocking enabled in your browser,
and you may have other popup-blocking programs installed,
either as browser add-ons, or as separate applications.
Popup are often blocked by more than one application — in this case, you must
configure all of them to allow the Web Soil Survey site (websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov) to open
popup windows.
In the Google Chrome browser, if popups are blocked, you will see the “blocked pop-up alert” icon at the right end of the address bar:
![Pop-ups were blocked Pop-ups were blocked](Images/Pop-ups_were_blocked.png)
Click this icon, and you will see the following dialog:
![Always allow pop-ups from... Always allow pop-ups from...](Images/Pop-ups_Always_allow.png)
Select “Always allow pop-ups from websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov” and press Done.
If you cannot configure your software to allow popups, proceed as follows:
- Since the Home Page always opens Web Soil Survey in a separate window,
instead of starting it from the home page, access the Web Soil Survey application directly,
at http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/WebSoilSurvey.aspx.
- On the Web Soil Survey application page, click the Preferences link in the Navigation bar.
- Uncheck “Open Links and PDFs in External Windows”.
- Click the Save Preferences button.
|
Application terminates with the message
“Session data has become unavailable. Your session has been terminated.” |
Web Soil Survey maintains a session between the server and your browser.
In certain cases, your browser will be redirected
to a different instance of the Web Soil Survey server
from the one on which you established your session.
This other server instance does not have access to your session data,
and cannot do anything but terminate your session.
This usually happens when your ISP changes your system’s apparent IP address.
For example, America Online is known to change users’ IP addresses frequently,
for security reasons.
No workaround. |
In Firefox, when first starting Web Soil Survey,
you may see the message, “Your Web Soil Survey session has expired.”
|
In Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers, session cookies are shared among all browser windows.
This means that every Gecko browser window open at the same time is associated with the same
Web Soil Survey session.
It also means that if you do not logout from Web Soil Survey, and simply let your session time out,
the next time you start Web Soil Survey, the application will notify you that your previous session has expired.
By contrast, in Internet Explorer session cookies are only shared among browser windows
started from the same browser window
(using File→New Window, for example).
Thus when you start Web Soil Survey in a new Internet Explorer browser window,
it will be assigned a new session cookie.
Workaround: When you are done with Web Soil Survey,
click the Logout link in the navigation bar.
Or if you do see the “Your Web Soil Survey session has expired” message,
simply refresh the browser to start over.
|
Area of Interest and Quick Navigation
Problem |
Explanation/Workaround |
Drop-downs with long options are not visible until clicked.
|
For example, in some cases the Soil Survey Area dropdown has options that are 120 or more characters long.
In this case, the dropdown looks as though it is cut off by the edge of the form, but if you click it,
the full options are displayed.
Workaround: Click the dropdown to see the options.
|
Cannot set AOI to some Soil Survey Areas |
Users can set their AOI to a whole Soil Survey Area,
selected in the Quick Navigation Soil Survey Area form. For some Soil Survey Areas, Web Soil Survey times out or gets an
“Out of memory” error when trying to set the AOI. This is because the spatial data for these Soil Survey Areas is extremely complex.
This will be fixed in a later release of Web Soil Survey. Workaround: In some cases, the data can be cleaned up to make setting an AOI possible.
If you need to set your AOI to a particular Soil Survey Area that currently fails, please use Contact Us to request that we
try to fix the problem for this particular Soil Survey Area.
|
Sometimes a Web Soil Survey URL in the Link bib cannot be saved as a Favorite in Internet Explorer. |
Normally, in Internet Explorer, you can right-click the URL in the Link bib and save it as a Favorite by clicking “Add to Favorites...”.
If the URL is too long, when you click Add from the Add to Favorites dialog,
you may see the error “The name you have entered for the favorite is too long.”
If this happens, just replace the URL in the “Name:” text input with a suitable title for the Favorite.
If the URL is even longer, nothing will happen when you click the “Add to Favorites...” menu item.
This is a bug in Internet Explorer.
Workaround:
- Right-click the URL and click “Copy Shortcut”.
- From the Favorites menu at the top of the browser, click “Add to Favorites...”.
Give the Favorite a suitable name.
Click Add.
This will add a favorite for the default Web Soil Survey URL.
- From the Favorites menu, right-click the Favorite you just added, and click “Properties”.
- In the Web Document tab, in the “URL:” text input, paste the URL you saved in the first step.
Click OK.
|
If you save a Web Soil Survey URL (with AOI, location, etc.) as a hyperlink in a Microsoft Word document,
clicking the link opens Web Soil Survey in a browser, but ignores the parameters. |
This is caused by an unfortunate interaction among Microsoft Word (or other Micrsoft Office application),
the web browser, and the Web Soil Survey application.
When you open Web Soil Survey with a URL containing AOI, location, etc.,
Web Soil Survey interprets the URL query parameters on the server, and then redirects to the normal Web Soil Survey URL.
Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint follow this redirection,
and only then invoke the default browser to display the link.
But the browser starts Web Soil Survey in a new session,
and the session in which the query parameters were set is no longer available.
Workaround: Instead of clicking the hyperlink, copy and paste it into your browser’s address bar.
|
In Safari on Windows, if you paste a Web Soil Survey URL into the address field,
using the Paste context menu item, Safari ignores the URL. |
This is a bug in Safari on Windows. This is not a problem in Safari on Macintosh.
Workarounds:
- Paste using CTRL-V (instead of the Paste context menu item), then press Return.
- Paste (using the Paste context menu item or CTRL-V), then type a space after the URL in the address field, then press Return.
|
Sometimes Import AOI operations appear to hang. |
Sometimes, Create AOI from Shapefile and Create AOI from Zipped Shapefile appear to hang.
You press the Set AOI button, and you see the busy cursor, but the operation apparently never finishes.
If you have to wait more than a minute or two, something has gone wrong, and the operation will never complete.
Workarounds: Refresh your browser and try the operation again.
|
Navigate by Hydrologic Unit does not work in areas outside the contiguous United States. |
No workaround. |
Navigating to some states and counties gives an “Invalid location” error. |
Because of problems with the 180° West Longitude line,
some choices for State and County in the Quick Navigation State and County form
result in “Invalid location” errors.
In particular, the following states and counties do not work correctly:
- the state of Alaska
- Aleutians West County, Alaska
- the state of Hawaii
- Honolulu County, Hawaii
See also the known problem Errors crossing the 180° West Longitude line.
For Aleutians West County, Alaska, because it spans the 180° West Longitude line,
No workaround.
For the other areas,
Workaround:
Navigate using a different Quick Navigation form, for example, Latitude and Longitude. |
Quick Navigate to BLM→Alaska→Anchorage gives an “Invalid location” error. |
The Anchorage BLM office covers an area from the Aleutian Islands to far southeast Alaska,
which is an invalid extent for Web Soil Survey, because it spans the 180° West Longitude line.
See also the known problem Errors crossing the 180° West Longitude line. No workaround.
|
No PLSS section data available in Alaska. |
No workaround. |
PLSS township borders are not visible in Alaska at a scale greater than 1:100,000. |
Web Soil Survey turns off township borders and turns on section borders at 1:100,000 scale.
In most areas, this makes sense.
However, since Web Soil Survey has no section data for Alaska, no borders appear. No workaround. |
Some PLSS section numbers end in “D”.
|
In some areas, where a township and the corresponding Duplicate township
have sections with the same section numbers,
the sections in the duplicate township have “D” appended to their section numbers.
Workaround:
Check “Show Public Land Survey Layer in Map,” navigate to the township,
and examine the section labels in the map.
If the section you wish to view has a “D” appended to its section number,
enter the section number with the “D”.
|
No Section data for some Townships. |
In some cases, you will see an error of the form: “Section not found
Section 1 not found in Township 17 North Range 1 East, California, Mount Diablo Meridian,”
when you know for sure that the section exists. This occurs because Web Soil Survey simply doesn’t
have section data for that section.
Workaround: Navigate to the Township and Range, then proceed using the Zoom In tool.
Or turn on the “Topographic Map” background layer in the Legend tab,
and locate the section you need visually.
|
Interactive Map
Problem |
Explanation/Workaround |
Errors displaying maps.
|
Sometimes when viewing a map, or changing tab to a tab that displays a map,
you may get an error dialog Cannot Display Map or similar.
This is usually caused by intermittent network errors.
Workaround: Try the operation again, or refresh your browser.
|
If you zoom to scale using the Map Scale dropdown,
then zoom to a different scale, then zoom back to the first scale,
your view may be different than the original view. |
This occurs when your original location is right on a UTM zone boundary,
and is caused by rounding errors in map projection causing the zoom centroid to fall on
one side or the other of the boundary. Workaround:
The only workaround is to zoom from a different location, which is unequivocally
on one side or the other from the UTM zone boundary.
|
Errors crossing the 180° West Longitude line. |
You will see “Invalid location” errors when you zoom out too far,
or when you zoom to a location that crosses the 180° West Longitude line,
for example, Aleutians West County, Alaska. No workaround. |
“Invalid location” errors on zoom.
|
Many seemingly reasonable zoom in or zoom out operations fail with “Invalid location” errors.
This results from projection errors, and generally occurs when zooming to a rather large area.
Workaround: Try changing View Extent to fit your area of interest better,
or zoom in to a smaller area, where projection errors will be minimized.
|
White backgrounds in Alaska. |
You will see a white background instead of the Aerial Photography layer in the map in parts of Alaska
at scales of 1:20,000 or greater in areas where Landsat imagery is displayed. No workaround. |
No Topographic Map layer in Alaska. |
The Topographic Map background layer is not available in Alaska.
The application is not able to detect that this layer is not available for this region and disable it in the Legend. No workaround. |
Parts of the Aerial Photography background layer appear black. |
This happens in some cases at the edges of UTM zones and at the edges of the available imagery data in the Terraserver.
Workaround: Turn off the “Aerial Photography” layer —
Click the Legend tab, scroll the Legend down to the Aerial Photography layer, and uncheck it.
Then you will see a white background instead. |
Date of aerial photography is unavailable for some areas. |
For most areas served by Web Soil Survey, you can find out the date the Aerial Photography map layer was created.
See the Frequently Asked Question How can I find the date of aerial photography used in Web Soil Survey?
However, for the following areas this functionality is not available:
- Alaska
- Arkansas
- Hawaii
- Louisiana
- Maine
- New Mexico
- Pennsylvania
- Texas
- American Samoa
- Federated States of Micronesia
- Guam
- Marshall Islands
- Palau
- Northern Mariana Islands
- Nuevo Leon, Mexico
No Workaround.
|
Soil Data Explorer
Problem |
Explanation/Workaround |
When AOI is in multiple soil survey areas, one of which has no soil maps,
Crop Yield ratings may result in the error “Cannot generate a map.”
|
Workaround: Create an AOI for the area within each of the soil survey areas separately.
|
When your AOI is in a soil survey area that has no soil maps, if you change your map unit selection,
ratings you‘ve already run will not take into account your changed map unit selection.
|
For example, create the AOI, select the map units you are interested in (in the AOI Properties panel),
then run a Crop Yield rating.
In Basic Options, you can select from the crops that are relevant to the map units you have selected.
If you later change your map unit selection,
the Crop Yield rating form will not update and show the crops relevant to your new list of map units.
Workaround: Create your AOI again,
and select the map units you need in the first place, or select all map units.
|
Printable Maps and Reports
Problem |
Explanation/Workaround |
In the printable version of a Soil Ratings map, some map unit polygons may not be colored as they are in the browser map. |
When creating a printable version of a Soil Ratings map, in some cases,
some or all of the map unit polygons are not colored, though they are in the browser map.
Most often, this is limited to the “Not Rated” polygons, which appear gray in the brower map.
However, in some cases none of the polygons in the printable version are colored.
No Workaround. |
The browser starts up Adobe Reader, but the PDF is not visible. |
In some cases, Printable Version or Checkout on the Shopping Cart tab
creates a PDF, and opens it in Adobe Reader in a browser window, but the document is not visible.
Workaround: Refresh the browser window containing the Adobe Reader. |
The printable map doesn’t show what was in the viewable map. |
Sometimes not all the map layers that are visible in the viewable map are visible in the printable map.
For example, Water Features lines, Transportation lines, or Federal Land boundaries may appear in one but not the other.
The display of certain map layers is controlled by the map scale.
Differences in the two maps may occur when the printable map is generated at a different scale than the
viewable map.
Workaround: Choose a particular scale for maps when creating a Printable Version or a Custom Report. |
Custom Soil Resource Report size estimates are inaccurate.
|
The estimates shown for custom report size on the Shopping Cart tab
may be as much as 20% different than the actual size of the report.
Workaround: Don‘t take these estimates too seriously.
|
Widows and Orphans in PDFs. |
In the Printable Version and Custom Soil Resource Report PDFs, the page breaks aren’t always where a human editor would have put them.
Sometimes these documents will contain a “widow,” the last line of a paragraph printed alone at the top of a page,
or an “orphan,” a subheading or the first line of a paragraph printed alone at the bottom of a page. No workaround. |
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