Marwin Shendo

CE 547 – GIS

Assignment 6 - STATSGO soil coverage data of New Mexico

Soil Properties:

In this portion of the assignment I downloaded all files from the cegis account. The STATSGO database contains soil coverage of New Mexico. We didn’t need the entire map of NM since we were going to be focusing our efforts to the Pecos Headwaters. PecosHUC shape file was retrieved from the assignment 5 files. After placing the STATSGO files into ArcMap I played with the symbols as well as joining and relating different tables to answer a few questions. By joining and relating table from different files made it simple to find answers to the following questions:

Describe the NM963 soil in terms of its properties in the Mapunit and Component Tables. How many components does it have? What are their names? What percentage of the map unit does each component comprise? Do these soil properties make sense considering where this soil is located? Yes, they are near the headwaters of the Pecos River.

Table containing the information above of NM963.

#	Component Name	Component in Mapunit	Soil Texture	Hydrologic Soil Group
1	Regnier	27%	clay loam	D
2	Latom	27%	fine sandy loam	D
3	Rock outcrop	18%	unweathered bedrock	D
4	Los Tanos	12%	fine sandy loam	C
5	Regnier	7%	clay loam	D
6	Latom	5%	gravel-fine sandy loam	D
7	Regnier	2%	gravel-fine sandy loam	D
8	Gallen	2%	gravel-sandy loam	B

What is the dominant soil texture? The dominant soil texture would be the fine sandy loam adding up to be 39%.

What is the predominant surface slope where this soil unit is found?

Component Name	Predominant surface slope (%)	Soil Texture
Regnier	15	clay loam
Latom	15	fine sandy loam
Rock outcrop	99	unweathered bedrock
Los Tanos	5	fine sandy loam
Regnier	35	clay loam
Latom	40	gravel-fine sandy loam
Regnier	80	gravel-sandy clay loam
Gallen	35	gravel-sandy loam

What percentage of the soil is in hydrologic soil groups A, B, C, D?

Soil

A- SANDY

B- Intermediate

C- Intermediate

D- CLAY

Percentage

12 %

86%

Layer Properties:

For mapunit NM963, how many layers does each component have? What is the total soil depth (inches) for each layer and the average depth (inches) for the map unit? What is the total water holding capacity (inches of water) over the full soil depth for each component? What is the average water holding capacity (inches of water)for soils in this map unit?

Table containing the answers of NM963.

Component Name	Number of Layers	Soil Depth (Inches)	Average for Mapunit (Inches)	Total water holding capacity (Inches)	Average water capacity. (Inches)
Regnier	3	22	29.84	3.06	1.874
Latom	2	20		1.04
Rock outcrop	1	60		0
Los Tanos	3	28		3.3
Regnier	3	22		3.06
Latom	2	20		1.04
Regnier	3	22		2.43
Gallen	4	60		3.52

Figure 1: State of New Mexico with the Pecos Headwaters highlighted!

Figure 2: Pecos headwaters highlighted with NM963 outlined in black.

Land Use:

In this section of the assignment I downloaded files from the web and unzipped the files to display them in ArcMap. I played with the symbols and displayed them as I wanted. I intersected and append both files which were kind of hard and confusing. Did not get to display it has you wanted since I am still having trouble.

Figure 3: Land use of the Pecos Headwaters and surrounding areas.