NATIONAL SOIL SURVEY CENTER LINCOLN, NE USDA-NRCS

1. UNDERSTANDING SOIL INTERPRETATIONS NATIONAL SOIL SURVEY CENTER LINCOLN, NE USDA-NRCS

2. Goals of this Class: • Upon completion of this class, participants will be able to: 1. Define an interpretation 2. Demonstrate an awareness of Properties, Rules, and Evaluations 3. Describe how they fit together 4. Describe the importance of component data in the interpretive process 5. Tell someone what the fuzzy number means 6. Produce interpretive reports for customers 7. Produce maps of interpretive results

3. Why do we interpret soils? “Few people besides soil scientists know enough about soils, and about the interactions among the many soil characteristics that define each kind of soil, to do the job by themselves.” “Experience shows that the soil scientist must take leadership in developing the interpretations.” “The soil scientist must have help and guidance from competent people in the related fields.” “Finally, his/her results should be tested in practical application. In fact, the soil scientist always lives in an atmosphere of criticism.” Charles Kellogg

4. > make an inventory of the soil resources of the United States; > keep the soil survey relevant to ever-changing needs; > interpret the information and make it available in a useful form; and > promote the soil survey and provide technical assistance in its use for a wide range of community planning and resource development issues related to non-farm and farm uses. Core Mission of the Soil Survey Program

5. NASIS Interpretations • Soil interpretations are models used to predict soil behavior under a defined criteria set • Interpretations have four pieces* • “Property” • “Evaluation” • “Subrule” aka “Base Rule” or “Rule” -”Interpretation” aka Parent or “Primary” rule

6. 1 Relative Impact 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 SLOPE % NASIS Interpretation Approach PRIMARY RULE BASE RULES EVALUATION PROPERTY “soil has limitations for playing fields if…” “soil is too sloping” “slope” EXEC SQL SELECT component slope_gradient_r FROM component WHERE … A Rule is a logic diagram that describes the relationship between the evaluations and subrules that make up the parent rule. A Rule produces a numerical value based on fuzzy mathematics operating on the numerical values from evaluations and other rules. A Rule processes the evaluation results into rating classes (interpretive values). An Evaluation takes the property value retrieved or calculated from the database, ranks it using approximate reasoning, and graphs its membership in a class. An evaluation produces a numerical result from 0 to 1. A Property is an SQL-like statement that retrieves specific soil data from the database, or calculates a soil property (such as AWC) from one or more NASIS data elements

7. Viewing and Running Property Scripts Start NASIS Refresh your local database and clear your selected set Find the query “Area/Lmap/Mapunit/MajorCompby AreaSym, AreaType (Training)” under Pangaea and run it using “National Test Data set” for Area Type and the area symbol “Interps”. Run it first against the National database then ACCEPT into your local database. Then query again to bring the data in to your selected set. Open the Component table and select the Berks component having Record ID 1878226 (make sure that the component is highlighted, the Component Record Number is the last data element in the Component Table)

8. Viewing and Running Property Scripts (Interpretive materials are a part of the local database, so you do not have to run a query to load them) Click on the “Interpretations” Object In the Explorer Panel, open “Properties”, “NSSC Pangaea”, double click on the script named “KSAT HIGHEST MINIMUM, 30-200cm OR FIRST RESTRICTION” The Property has three tabs: General, Property, and Text

9. Viewing and Running Property Scripts The “General” tab gives general information about the property, such as how it works and what the expected output is. The Data Type is specified as Numeric or Character. The Modality may be “High, Low, Representative Value”, “High, Low” or “Representative Value”. Most interpretive results that are reported are based on the rv.

10. Viewing and Running Property Scripts The “Property” tab displays the script that retrieves the desired data. “select” specifies the data elements to be retrieved “DERIVE” gets data using other scripts “DEFINE” creates new variables Properties use the same scripting language as reports

11. Viewing and Running Property Scripts The “Text” tab may display information about edits that the script has had.

12. Viewing and Running Property Scripts *Make sure that the component mentioned above is still highlighted and the “KSAT HIGHEST MINIMUM, 30-200cm OR FIRST RESTRICTION” property is selected for viewing *Click the green “Run property against local database” arrow on the NASIS Toolbar to run the property on the Berks component *A browser window should open and display results that look like the next slide

13. These numbers are the values the variables had when the script finished running “low”, “rv”, and “high” are the numbers sent to the evaluation

14. Viewing and Running NASIS Evaluations This evaluation returns 1 for true, 0 for false *The evaluation is an assessment of a particular soil property for its relative impact as a limiting feature based on a chosen evaluation type *The membership value indicates the relative truthfulness of the statement, for example: “it is absolutely true that this soil property is in the set of soil properties limiting to land use when it exceeds this threshold” * The membership value describes the degree to which a soil is a member of the set of limited soils. 1.0 is a full member, 0.001 to 0.999 denotes a partial member, and if the membership value is 0, the soil is a non-member of the set of limited soils *The low and high values specified are agreed upon by a team of subject matter experts *Many different shapes of curves to reflect the empirical nature of the relationship

15. Viewing and Running NASIS Evaluations Use the “Where property is used” tool to find which evaluation(s) use the property we just ran The output report appears in a browser window In the Explorer Panel, open “Evaluations”, “NSSC Pangaea”, double click on the evaluation name “Ksat Highest Minimum 30-200cm or Restriction” The Evaluation has three tabs: General, Evaluation, and Text The General tab contains the Description which explains what the evaluation does

16. Viewing and Running NASIS Evaluations * The Evaluation tab displays the membership function that relates the magnitude of the soil property value to its degree of limitation or suitability for the land use in question based on the evaluation type chosen * The membership function depicts the degree to which a soil is a member, non-member, or partial member of the set of soils that are limited (or suited) for a particular land use by the soil property being examined * In this case, ksat less than 14.1 um/sec is not a problem, but ksat higher than 42 um/sec is and ksat between 14.1 and 42 um/sec is the “fuzzy space” * Another word for “membership value” is “fuzzy number”, since the evaluation is really a “fuzzy set” which is a part of “fuzzy logic”

17. Viewing and Running NASIS Evaluations To run the Evaluation, make sure that the Berks component is highlighted in the Component table and that the evaluation called “Ksat Highest Minimum 30-200cm or Restriction” is selected in the view window Click on the green arrow on the menu bar to run the property against the selected component A browser window should open and display results that look like the next slide

18. Fuzzy number from “low” Fuzzy numbers from “rv” Fuzzy number from “high” The “High RV Value” is the fuzzy number reported in NASIS tables. More than one RV is reported because some property scripts may report more than one rv. This does not happen very often. Usually, the High RV and Low RV are the same, depending how they were populated in NASIS The property data should be just as was seen before

19. Viewing and Running NASIS Rules Use the “Where evaluation is used” tool to find which rule(s) use the evaluation we just ran The output report appears in a browser window In the Explorer Panel, open “Rules”, “NSSC Pangaea”, double click on the rule name “Ksat Highest Minimum, 30-200cm, Seepage” The Rule Editor has four tabs: General, Rule, Rating Classes, and Text The General tab contains the Description which explains what the rule does

20. NASIS Rules: • Base Rule or subrule – • A logical statement about one limiting feature given certain criteria: “It is absolutely true that a soil is limited as a site for a septic system if the slope exceeds 40 percent” • Interpretation or Primary Rule– • A logical statement, given the way the data was evaluated, about land use, limiting features, and the relationship among limiting features: “It is absolutely true that a soil is limited as a site for a septic system if it is too steep, too wet, too stony, or too permeable”

21. Viewing and Running NASIS Rules The “Primary Interpretation?” button allows the rule writer to designate whether a rule is meant to be a part of a larger rule or if it meant to stand alone. Most interpretations are aggregations of many subrules or base rules The “Rule Design” allows the writer to designate whether the rule is a limitation style (fuzzy number of zero means not limited) or a suitability style (fuzzy number of one means well suited) or class style (fuzzy number has no land use connotation) The “Not Rated Phrase” allows the writer to specify the output that is produced when null data is encountered which can make finding the null fields much easier

22. Viewing and Running NASIS Rules Clicking the Rule tab causes the logic diagram of the rule to be displayed. The green oval represents the evaluation that was previously discussed. The square represents a “Hedge”, which in this case directs what the output will be if null data is encountered. Clicking the Rating Class tab opens the Rating Class Table where rating class names are assigned to ranges of fuzzy numbers Clicking the Text tab displays the Rule text table where changes to rules are documented Clicking the green arrow will run the rule against the selected component and produce the output seen on the next slide

24. Viewing and Running NASIS Interpretations Use the “View where rule is used” tool to find which interpretations(s) use the rule we just ran The output report appears in a browser window In the Explorer Panel, open “Rules”, “NSSC Pangaea”, double click on the rule name “DHS - Site for Composting Facility - Surface” (you can filter the rules by checking the “View primary rules only” box) Just as before, the Rule Editor has four tabs: General, Rule, Rating Classes, and Text The General tab contains the Description which explains what the interpretation does

25. Viewing and Running NASIS Rules *Clicking the Rule tab causes the logic diagram of the interpretation to be displayed. The green rectangles represents the subrules that are used in the main rule to rate the soil based on the criteria. *The yellow circle is the operator, which is used to determine the relationship between the limiting factors and land use. The “OR” operator means the factor that produced the highest fuzzy number is most limiting. *The “Zoom” is used to size the diagram so that you can see as much as possible in the edit window. *Clicking the “View where rule is used” tool will open a browser that shows all the first level subrules that make up the interpretation, as shown on the next slide Double click in a subrule box to open the subrule

26. Viewing and Running NASIS Rules *These are the first level subrules that the interpretation uses. Some of the subrules may also have subrules. The greater the layering of subrules that are dependent on other subrules, the greater the “rule depth”. We will cover rule depth later. *Clicking on the “Rating Classes” tab opens the rating class table. This is where the familiar rating class names like “Not limited” are assigned. In a primary rule, the rating classes are for the overall interpretation. The subrules provide the rating reasons.

27. Double click in the rule box, double click in the evaluation oval, click the “Open” button

28. Viewing and Running NASIS Rules *The edits to the primary rule are documented under the Text tab *You can run the interpretation against any component selected in your selected set by pressing the green arrow *A browser window will open with the results (next slides)

31. The characteristics “Slope” and “Precipitation” describe the component as a whole, while the saturated hydraulic conductivity (“Ksat”) describes layers in the component

32. Note that even though some of the data is character, in NASIS it is stored as an integer. This component does not have a high water table, so the rv for the depth is “empty”

33. No permafrost No flooding or ponding, so the property scripts are made to return “0”

34. Each layer is examined for large rock fragments in the soil This looks for large rock fragments on the soil The rating for a soil is based on the populated data, so this data must be right to produce a valid interpretation.

35. Review * Soil interpretations are models used to predict soil behavior under defined criteria * In NASIS, the interpretation generator has four major pieces: “Properties”, Evaluations”, and “Subrules” and “Primary Rules or Interpretations” *Properties are scripts that retrieve soil property data from the database *Evaluations compare the data from a property to an established membership curve to assess the impact on land use and produce a fuzzy number *Rules provide the rating class for the soil property associated with the fuzzy number *Primary rules synthesize many rules (subrules) to produce the overall rating *The soil property data in the database is used to produce the ratings; thus, if the data does not reflect the soil component properly, the rating will not be appropriate. *The fuzzy number is an indicator of the degree of membership a component has in the set of limited components, in limitation-style interpretations: 1.00 means a full member, 0.00 means a non-member. In a suitability style interpretation, 1.00 means well suited and 0.00 means not suited.

36. Producing and Mapping Interpretive Data Manuscript-style reports Exports for mapping

37. Two kinds of manuscript-style reports: “MANU” “INTERP” Have the prefix “INTERP” Portrait or Landscape Table User-defined lists of interpretations These report scripts can be found on the NSSC Pangaea NASIS site • Have the prefix “MANU” • Groupings of related interpretations • These report scripts can be found on the NSSC Pangaea NASIS site

38. Manuscript-style reports “MANU” prefix Click on the Reports object, open the NSSC Pangaea menu, double click on “MANU - Dwellings and Small Commercial Buildings” Options for running reports: Run against selected set Run against National database, short run time, results open on your screen Run offline against National database, allows long run time, link to results sent by email These reports are meant to be run against your selected set, not the National database Reports to be run against the National database must have a parameter to limit the number of components interpreted Click Option 1. The results look like the next slide If you run an report without parameters against the National database, NASIS tries to run the report against the ENTIRE database!! A “parameterized” report opens a dialogue box when you click the run arrow

40. Manuscript-style reports “INTERP” prefix Click on the Reports object, open the NSSC Pangaea menu, double click on “INTERP - (NAT) Portrait Table” The Description gives information about the report and how to use it Click on the “Run report against national database” button This opens the dialogue box seen on the next slide Running interpretation reports (and a few others) will take a long time on your local machine. It is best to let the National database do the work, in my opinion. Run reports for large soil survey areas offline against the National database to avoid tying up your NASIS interface while the report runs. Experiment with different interpretations, methods of running, and parameters, as seen on the next slide

41. Manuscript-style reports “INTERP” prefix wv007 This is the dialogue box for a parameterized report This report allows us to choose any non-MLRA soil survey area, enter wv007 Select the interpretations as shown Set the Reporting Depth to 2. The meaning of reporting depth is explained on the next slide. Click Print RV and Print Fuzzy Ratings as shown The Maximum Non-Zero reasons is the number of limiting factors to display. It is usually 4 You can add a name for the report if you wish You can experiment with different settings here. You can also look at the description and the script.

42. Reporting depth • The Reporting Depth has nothing to do with soil depth • In this hypothetical interpretation, land use is impacted by content of rock fragments, slope, soil reaction, and depth to water table, so each has its own subrule • In the interpretations system, the reason a soil is limited is reported by a Rule (Rating Class Names) • Since size matters when it comes to rock fragments, the rock fragment subrule is composed of a subrule for each size class of fragment • Since it is useful to know if soil is too acid or too alkaline, the reaction subrule is composed of two subrules, one for acidity and one for alkalinity • Most of the time, we report a depth of 2 (Rule level 1) • When diagnosing problems, use rule depth 3 or higher

44. Exporting interpretive results Two kinds of exports: non-aggregated and aggregated Non-aggregated reports allow you to see how each component rates, but puts much more information on a page than manuscript reports Example: “NSSC Pangaea”:“AGR - Nat. Com. Crop Prod. Ind. Corn and Soybeans Export” Open the report, insert information in the dialogue box, and run the report (This report can be run against the national database) Example of the output on the next slide (after loading into Excel) You can see additional data to see if the rating makes sense

46. Exporting interpretive results • You can also plot data from an export to see if it makes sense or where data is peculiar • Excel below, JMP right

47. Exporting interpretive results *Map unit aggregated export reports use some sort of aggregation to combine the output from components *Several NASIS reports find the “dominant condition” of the components in the map unit *Rating classes and interpretation can be fixed: (GPR (NAT) Suitability Report Dominant Condition (Export)) *Rating classes and interpretation can be user defined: (INTERP- (NAT) Data Export Dominant Condition 5 Class) *The lmapunitiid (mukey) is included for linkage to SSURGO spatial data * The next slides are an example of an export and a map of soil suitability for gopher tortoise habitat which uses fixed rating classes

50. Project Assignment 1: Run a manuscript-style report for at least one interpretation Name and save the file and email it to your mentor Hint: Use rule depth 2 and limit reasons to 4 Assignment 2: Prepare thematic maps for the interpretation(s) you chose for Assignment 1 Hint: When you import the export into Access, make sure mukey is text