Geochemical and mineralogical maps along with a histogram, boxplot, and empirical cumulative distribution function plot for each element or mineral whose data are provided in DS-801

"Soil Formation and Soil Use in Relation to the Environment" is a database of soil characteristics that can be used with models to predict how soils will behave under a variety of soil uses. Its purpose is to determine the relationship of hydrology and geomorphology to soil chemical and physical properties for major soil landscapes of Indiana. Also to determine the characteristics and processes of formation of some "pan" soil layers that restrict root growth and water movement, such as plow pans, fragipans, and dense till horizons, and determine how they formed.

Collection Organization: Purdue University

Collection Methodology: This work emphasizes the study of soils in their natural environment. Soils sampled to represent a

sequence of soils in which the conditions for one soil formation factor varies and those for the other factors are held constant. For example, the hydrology of soil along a toposequence in which the hillslope position of the soils differ, but the parent material, vegetation, climate and time of soil formation remain constant was studied. Some properties measured periodically in the field using tensiometers, piezometers, infiltrometers, microelectrodes, and other instruments. Other properties measured in the laboratory using various chemical, physical and mineralogical techniques.

Collection Frequency: Ongoing.

Update Characteristics: Ongoing.

LANGUAGE:

English ACCESS/AVAILABILITY:

Data Center: Purdue University Dissemination Media: Hard copy Access Instructions: Contact the data center. Access Restrictions: None Availability Status: On Request

Historically, closed eastern forests transitioned into open savannas and prairies in the US Midwest, but this transition is poorly understood. To investigate the eastern boundary of the prairie-forest ecotone, we conducted a case study of historic and modern vegetation patterns of the Yellow River watershed in northwest Indiana. Historic vegetation came from the Public Land Survey notes collected in the early 1800s, whereas modern vegetation came from the Forest Inventory Analysis and USGS National Land Cover Database. We mapped historical survey vegetation data using GIS to reconstruct the region’s past and current forest composition and structure. We also mapped climate, topography and soil composition across the watershed to investigate the relationship between historic vegetation and environmental gradients. We found a sharp transition in the pre-settlement forest structure and composition, with dense deciduous forests in the eastern portion of our study area and open oak savannas in the west. The savanna ecosystem dominated in sandy, well-drained soils and was at a slightly lower elevation than the adjacent closed forest. Modest environmental changes accompanied major vegetation changes in the past, which might suggest that fire and hydrological patterns helped maintain the sharp ecotone. By contrast, the modern forest shows no difference in tree density and composition across the watershed, which is consistent with major land use and hydrology changes in the watershed since settlement. On the modern landscape, land that was historically closed forest now has higher agricultural productivity compared to land that was historically savanna, whereas the historic savanna currently supports more mesic forest. These results suggest that the environmental gradient continues to subtly shape the landscape. Though land use change has largely removed the closed mixed hardwood and oak savannas from this area, a better understanding of the historic vegetation and the conditions that supported it can help inform land management and restoration, as well as reveal ecological processes that drive vegetation transitions.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant #DEB-1241874

IDEM encourages the beneficial reuse of biosolids, industrial waste products, and pollutant-bearing water by land application in a manner that protects human health and the environment. Land application involves spraying or spreading these materials onto the land surface or injecting or incorporating them into the soil. Reuse of these waste products as a soil amendment and/or fertilizer provides many benefits to Indiana’s agricultural community and citizens. For more information, visit IDEM: Managing Waste: Land Application.

This data set contains geochemical data from soils and other regoliths collected and analyzed by Hans Shacklette and colleagues beginning in 1958 and continuing until about 1976. Geochemical point-symbol maps were plotted from these data and published as U.S.G.S. Professional Paper 1270 entitled "Element Concentrations in Soils and Other Surficial Materials of the Conterminous United States". The samples were collected at a depth of about 20 cm from sites that, insofar as possible, had surficial materials that were very little altered from their natural condition and that supported native plants. The sample material at most sites could be termed "soil" because it was a mixture of disintegrated rock and organic matter. Some of the sampled deposits, however, were not soils as defined above, but were other regolith types. These included desert sands, sand dunes, some loess deposits, and beach and alluvial deposits that contained little or no visible organic material. The samples were chemically analyzed by a variety of techniques in the U.S. Geological Survey laboratories in Denver, CO.

This collection is referred to as “Honey Creek Area 1978.” This name is consistent throughout the finding aid, the file folders, and the box labels. The associated report title is Intensive Subsurface Survey for Buried Cultural Resources at The Indiana and Michigan Electric Company Rockport Plant, Rockport, Indiana. The extent of this collection is 7.5 linear inches. The collection was housed in one acidic box and inside of three acidic accordion files along with several other acidic brown accordion folders that contained documentation from other Rockport Generating Station archaeological investigations. The different document collections were kept separate according to the original housing. No deliberate original order was discerned for the materials. The collection was in good condition although a few holes and tears were repaired. Approximately 600 boring holes were drilled over a 1.5-mile stretch, and these findings were recorded on Archaeological Boring Forms. Each boring form was marked in the upper left hand corner with pencil throughout the collection for unknown reasons. Due to the extent of the marks and because they appeared to be purposefully drawn, the marks were not erased. The Archaeological Boring Forms were organized according to the north coordinate and then by the east and west coordinates of the bore holes. One photograph and five slides were removed from this collection to a photography storage folder. The photograph contains a black and white image of site 12SP2896. The images on the sides were of the boring rig and the bore holes. Descriptions were written in pen on each of the negatives, which aided in writing the scanned asset description. This collection included a number of oversized materials. These materials include maps of the Honey Creek Area, with the bore holes indicated. There were multiple copies of each oversized map; therefore, the best copy was selected and scanned using an oversized scanner. For more information about the Honey Creek Area 1978 (Accession Number 1409/1409A) document collection, please refer to the document collections entitled Grandview Area 1978 (Accession Number 1407/1407A), Rockport Site N.D. (Accession Number 1420), and Rockport 1980 (Accession Number 1445), and Rockport Site 1984 (Accession Number 1563).

This CD presents maps derived from a subset of the National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) Hydrogeochemical and Stream Sediment Reconnaissance (HSSR) data. Approxiamately 260,000 samples were analyzed in the continental U.S. and consisted of solid samples, including stream, lake, pond, spring, and playa sediments, and soils. Data for eleven elements were analyzed and included on this release of the National Geochemical Atlas CD: Na, Ti, Fe, Cu, Zn, As, Ce, Hf, Pb, Th, and U. The National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) program of the Department of Energy (DOE) collected a vast amount of chemical data on sediment, soil, and water samples from the United States in the late 1970's and early 1980's. This element of the NURE program was known as the Hydrogeochemical and Stream Sediment Reconnaissance (HSSR). The NURE HSSR data have long been available to the public in a variety of formats, ranging from the original paper reports produced by the DOE (see Averett, 1984), to comprehensive digital releases on CD-ROM by the U.S. Geological Survey in the last few years (Hoffman and Buttleman, 1994; 1996), to digital releases on the Internet of reformatted and cleaned data (Smith, 1998). While these publications remain the best sources of the complete, primary data, and are accompanied by documentation of the sampling protocols, sample characteristics, and analytical methods, they are difficult to use for geochemical research, especially when the study area covers a wide area of the United States. This publication is intended to allow the rapid visualization of the geochemical landscape of the United States using the NURE HSSR data. Here, the user is relieved of the responsibility of selecting and processing the raw data; this was done in the preparation of the CD. A powerful geographic-information system (GIS) tool, the ArcView program of Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI), is provided to allow one to probe and manipulate the processed NURE data. Within the ArcView environment, multiple presentations of the NURE are provided, ranging from color-coded point maps, to bitmap-images on a national scale, to interpreted maps based on geologic and hydrologic units. Because the NURE HSSR data have been processed by the author for the production of this CD, the user must use a degree of caution in interpreting the maps produced here, and in using the data files found on the disc. One must understand the methods used in deriving the data on this CD in order to judge the significance of any particular map or data feature. Fortunately, the raw data used in the production of this CD are available in digital form (Hoffman and Buttleman, 1996), for examination by sophisticated users.