Soil Surveys

This guide will help you find printed or online county and state soil surveys.

County & State Soil Surveys

**For assistance using the Web Soil Survey, read the USDA's Getting Started with Web Soil Survey instructions or contact Pendergrass Library.**

For the print collection of State Soil surveys at Pendregrass Libary, they are cataloged and shelved in three main classes that depend on the year the survey was published. These classes are:

Report year
No.-year
County-State

Use this chart to see how different soil survey years are shelved in Pendergrass Library and cataloged in One Search:

Years	Call Number	Shelved by	Title Search	System Number	Notes
1800-1922	S591.A2	Report-year	Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils	470238
1923-1937	S591.A22	No.-year	Soil Survey Washington D.C.	1617335
1938-1966	S591.A22	County-state	Soil Survey Washington D.C.	1617335	All States and counties on one record
1967-date	S599.01.T37	County -state	Soil Survey Tennessee *or the state you are looking for.	Various system numbers for each state	Each county/state has individual records.
Islands-all dates	S599.8-------

See our list of Tennessee Soil Surveys by County for holdings at Pendergrass Library.

Search tip: Because of the variations in titles, publishers and the changes over time, please use multiple search terms, like "soil survey report" or "soil survey reports" or "soil survey of...(fill in county, state)" or "soil survey of...(fill in the state)."

Contact Peter Fernandez for downloadable data for the Tennessee Soil Survey.

Soil Surveys Search Tips

Surveys are published and bound in multiple ways. There is no easy way to look at them all in the catalog or in the stacks. Please use multiple searches and always ASK US if you can't find what you are looking for.

Where bound separately (usually years 1938-), the soil surveys are not shelved according to their call number cutter (which includes a year designation). Instead, they are shelved within the call number in alphabetic order by State, and within state by County. In searching for bound volumes, remember that the date the soil survey was issued is not always the same as the date that is used on the spine of the bound volume.

It is not always possible to determine from the online catalog whether a survey has been completed for a particular county/state. Instead, check the NRCS List of Printed Soil Surveys by State for an updated list. Not all counties have completed survey projects and so will not yet have published soil surveys. Ask for help if you do not find what you need.

Survey Access Updates

A recent development is the publishing of soil surveys, geospatial data, and maps online. As of August 2007, 14 Tennessee counties have their most recent soil surveys online - Cannon (2003), Carter (2004), Clay (2004), Cumberland (2002), Grainger (2000), Jackson (2004), Jefferson (2000), Johnson (2005), Marshall (2005), Moore (2006), Perry (2006), Rhea (2005), and Scott County Area (2006). In addition, digital geographic data for Knox County, TN, can be found at KGIS.org.

Soil survey information is regularly updated and posted to the Web Soil Survey, which is the official source for current information. The Web Soil Survey provides both tabular and spatial data and allows you to create a custom soil resource report for your specific area of interest.