March, 1998                                          SCSB#391

Several sets of data are included in this report. These data were selected to support and help identify soil mineral assemblages.
 
Table 3 lists assemblage classes, dominant minerals expected in soil materials in these classes, and some soil series that should be representative of mineral assemblage classes. These were selected from a set compiled by the USDA-ARS staff at the Blackland Research Center, Temple, Texas. Two additional subsets were selected from this large database and data from the National Soil Survey Laboratory, Lincoln, Nebraska. These large data sets are available in dBASE  format.  Soil descriptions are available on-line from the Statistics Laboratory at Iowa State University. Network address: http://www.statlab.iastate.edu/cgi-bin/osd/osdname.cgi

The two data sets in dBASE are; file <Nssl.dbf> which is a set of mineralogical, chemical, and physical  data for horizons of a selected set of southern soils, and the set <Mineral.dbf> that includes only mineralogy data from a selected set of Southern U.S. soils. The files can be imported by clicking the highlighted file names and saved as a dBase file.  The .dbf  can then be imported into a spreadsheet or database program.

NSSL.dbf - This file consists of 888 horizon records with 35 data fields. The data were obtained from the National Soil Survey Laboratory in Lincoln, NE. This is a sub-set of only the pedons that included a soil classification code and had at least one horizon of mineralogy data. Data fields are listed below, read from left to right:
 

MUID	MUID1	MUID2	MUID3	MLRA
SAMPLE_ID	STATE	SERIES
Upper depth	Lower depth	Clay	Silt	Sand
Carbon	Iron	Calcium	Magnesium	Sodium
Potassium	Aluminum	CEC (pH 7)	CaCO3	pH (H2O)
1/3 bar water	15 bar water	Sample ID	State	Series
MLRA #	Subgroup code	Part-size family	Mineral family	Temperature
Clay CEC-7	Clay ECEC	Mineralogy

 
The first four fields are map unit ID numbers (see legend) that were designated in the corresponding MLRA. The mineral assemblage can be approximately placed into a mineral assemblage map unit by locating the MLRA. Some exact locations should be available by request from respective states that submitted the sample (use sample ID number) or the National Soil Survey Laboratory in Lincoln, NE.

Mineral.dbf - This file includes mineral data indexed to pedon and sample numbers. Each state file was copied from a set compiled by USDA-ARS , Blackland Research Center in Temple Texas. The state can be identified in the field just preceeding the field for particle-size and kind of analysis code for the sample. Each record starts with a pedon ID code followed by several fields identifying the horizon sample. The first mineral identification, size method or other codes follows the STATE field. The particle-size and/or analysis method follow fields that have a double asterisk (**). Field names are not consistent throughout because the number of analyses and kind of analysis differ between samples. The numerical code in the field following the STATE field or a double asterisk is the size fraction and analysis code (15=x-ray analysis of the total clay). All mineral names are coded. Following the last mineral-related field are fields giving location codes for the sample. These were obtained from a site file on a CD distributed by the Soil Survey Laboratory, Lincoln, NE (NSSC Soil Survey Laboratory Characterization Data, Sept. 1997). The file has 2784 records in 130 fields. Mineral names are coded, (KK=kaolinite) and are reported in relative values, 5 to 1, for XRD and percent for the other analysis in the field following the mineral name code. All codes are included in lists and tables provided by the National Soil Survey Laboratory (Table 4 and Table 5) .  The complete National Soil Survey Center, Soil Survey Lab Database can be accessed at http://vmhost.cdp.state.ne.us/~nslsoil/soil.html.

In addition to dBASE, most other spreadsheet and database formats will accept these files which can be used to find, query, sort and print various data elements in the set.