MLRA Region-11 SDQS Issues and Concerns

1. Not enough Super MLRA Project Offices have been established in Michigan to carry out the National and Regional Soil Survey update and maintenance concepts. The southern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan has a significant soil survey update workload (about 19 out-of-date soil surveys) that needs to be addressed soon. These offices should have similar staff structure and equipment as offices in adjacent states. Budget and staffing constraints and completion of backlog soil surveys have hampered MLRA updating activities in Ohio, also.
2. We need to bring on new staff and provide training. A lot of expertise will be lost within the next 5-10 years through retirement. We need to start training replacements now. Maintaining a cadre of highly qualified soil scientists to produce soil survey and provide the technical support needed in the use of soil information is critical.
3. We need to establish Resource Analyst positions at the MLRA Project Offices in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin to assist with GIS efforts, SSURGO, updating STATSGO, marketing soil surveys, watershed projects, training, etc. Illinois and Missouri have great success stories from the establishment of these Resource Analyst positions in accomplishing GIS project activities.
4. MLRA Soil Survey Project Leaders need to communicate more across state and MLRA boundaries. We need to be working as a team within the region, not by states, to achieve the National Soil Survey Division Goals. Those political boundaries do cause some communication and administrative problems. We feel that these political boundaries should be disregarded when we are working with a continuum of natural resources and their wise use and management.

5. Lack of protocol addressing the responsibility for field review assistance, revision of soil series, and NASIS database population for soil survey correlation and manuscript preparation has hampered efforts in some states within the region, but not all. Supervisors of Project Leaders and their staff sometimes have a different priority or agenda, which delays our progress in meeting the overall REGION 11 goals.

6. It is important that Resource Soil Scientists be given some responsibilities to help with populating and updating the NASIS database for SSURGO Certification and Customer Tool Kit efforts. This is especially needed for those data elements that are important to NRCS Resource Management Programs.

7. There is a great need for the development of defendable and consistent Soil Moisture Status Guidelines for Region 11 soils. To achieve this effort, we need more complete and long term water table data. We would like support for the purchase of 30 electronic water level loggers to be installed in soils on various landform positions.

8. We request that the host State Conservationists support the upgrade of Region-11 Soil Data Quality Specialist position to GS-13 grade level.

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