About Us

The mission of the Soil Inventory and Evaluation Section is to “improve the usefulness and maintain the relevancy of soils information.”

Through this section, the division is a partner in the Ohio Soil Survey, along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service and The Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC).

The three agencies are represented on the Ohio Soil Inventory Board, which was created in 1953 as “the body responsible for developing and guiding an adequate soil survey program for the State.”

Staff

The staff consists of two soil scientists based in Columbus, four others based in field offices, and one college intern who is a member of The Ohio State University soil judging team.

The Columbus-based staff members are Administrator Neil Martin and Digital Soil Information Coordinator Aaron Lantz.

Two of the soil scientists based in field offices serve as Soil Survey Project Managers who direct the division’s efforts to keep Ohio’s soils information up-to-date, in collaboration with NRCS soil scientists involved in soil survey project investigations in Ohio and surrounding states.

Neil Martin is responsible for investigations and recommendations for updating soils information in Regions 2, 6, 8, 10, 11 and 12 on the Soil Regions of Ohio map.

Matt Deaton is responsible for investigations and recommendations for updating soils information in the rest of the state.  He also is available to provide assistance to SWCDs in the same area.

Two Conservation Soil Scientists are involved in soil survey project investigations designed to update soils information, but they also serve SWCDs by helping them with site-specific investigations and with using soils information effectively.

Soil scientists in the Division of Lands and Soil became members of the Soil Inventory and Evaluation Section of the Division of Soil and Water Conservation when the new division was created in 1982.

History of the Ohio Soil Survey

The Ohio Soil Survey began in 1900, when U.S. Department of Agriculture soil scientists studied the soils in Montgomery County. By 1949, when the Division of Lands and Soil (DLS) was created as one of the seven original divisions in ODNR, soil scientists of USDA and the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station (now known as OARDC) had completed soil surveys in 32 counties. One more county soil survey project was completed before the DLS was activated and staffed in 1952.

ODNR charged its newly staffed division with working with its partners to complete soil surveys by 1968 in the 55 remaining counties and to replace the 12 soil surveys published before 1920, which were by 1952 considered inadequate. Unfortunately, DLS and USDA soil scientists were able to complete soil surveys in only 23 more counties by 1968, but by then the standards for an adequate soil survey had increased dramatically.

Partners in the Ohio Soil Survey held a “Threshold Acre” Celebration in 1992 to bring attention to completing the soil survey for the 88th county in the state. Field investigations had been completed to replace or update information in soil survey publications from all but one of the counties surveyed before 1952 plus three that were surveyed after 1952.

By 1992, field investigations were already underway to update soils information for seven Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCD) that considered their soil survey publications to be inadequate for local needs. Soil survey update projects were completed in these seven counties plus two others before the Ohio Soil Inventory Board adopted a more efficient way for soil survey update projects to be conducted in the state. Completing the Statewide Digital Soils Information Project, initiated in 2000, was a major step toward increasing the efficiency at which Ohio’s soils information can be updated.