Geographia Technica, No. 2/2007, pp. 85 - 108

LAND AND SOIL RESOURCES OF LOUISIANA, USA

D.C. Weindorf

ABSTRACT - For years, researchers have used county or parish soil surveys when conducting fieldwork and research. Such surveys provided researchers with quick, easily accessible information (chemical, physical, taxonomic) in the field. The classification of soils has profound impacts on a variety of soil properties from land use to agronomic productivity. While initial soil survey work in Louisiana is complete, the inventory of soils in Louisiana is dynamic and subject to temporal change. The soil survey staff continues to produce soil series updates and continually works to update soil maps in response to changing land use and concepts of soil survey. For example, soil surveys were published for years on an individual parish basis. Yet such political boundaries do not conform to natural soil or land use patterns. As such, parish soil surveys often resulted in fragmentation of soils data along artificial (political) boundaries. Today, much greater emphasis is placed on mapping soils across parish boundaries using the concept of major land resource areas (MLRAs).

Keywords: land, soil, Louisiana, classification, soil survey

Weindorf_LAND_SOIL_RESOURCES_LOUSIANA.pdf