| | Information about soil and landform characteristics for any location in Alberta’s 64 million-acre agricultural land base is just a couple of clicks away with the Alberta Soil Information Viewer. Producers, agrologists and other land resource managers can use this free, online, easy-to-use viewer in a wide variety of practical applications.
The viewer marries the AGRASID soils database of Alberta’s agricultural area with high-resolution air photos. That combination allows you to see soil characteristics in the context of other landscape elements, like lakes, creeks, hills, woodlots, buildings and roads, and to bring these elements together in your planning and decision-making. And, to help you get started, the viewer has tours and case studies to walk you through examples of applications, while demonstrating how to use features like its drawing and calculator tools.
Alberta Agriculture and Food, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and private consultants worked together to develop the viewer. “To my knowledge there isn’t anything else quite like this viewer in Alberta. There are examples in the private sector that you have to pay for, and there are examples of internal applications that other departments have developed. But there is no other public one, that I’m aware of,” says David Spiess, a Resource Data Engineer at Alberta Agriculture and Food.
Spiess outlines some of the viewer’s many highlights. “One highlight is the fact that it has user-friendly landscape descriptions. Producers can get information about their farmland in language that agrologists and soil scientists will understand. That’s really important in enabling them to carry out their plans – whether it’s an Environmental Farm Plan, or a fertilizer program, or if they are looking to buy similar land. …They can say, ‘According to this application, my land has this, this and this characteristic.’ And the land resource advisors can make inferences based on how it’s described because it’s in a language that ties into their expertise.”
“Another neat feature is that it’s very easy to locate yourself with the viewer. As long as you know your land’s legal location, you can very quickly, with the search tools and the spatial layers provided, get to your land and see what it looks like.”
As well, the viewer’s area and distance calculator and its text and line mark-up tools allow you to do a lot more than just view information. For example, you could work out the area available for manure spreading by marking the required setbacks from water bodies, and then use the calculator to determine the area remaining in the field. Or you could draw a planned fence to keep cattle out of a waterway or dugout and use the calculator to determine the fence’s length, so you can work out how much wire and how many posts would be needed. Once you’re done your map work, you can print and save a copy of your map!
It’s no wonder the viewer is very popular. “In the last quarter of 2006, the Alberta Soil Information Viewer averaged about 2000 visits per month. In the first seven days of 2007, there were some 662 visits,” notes Spiess. In about 80% of those visits, the users printed out maps from their sessions, suggesting that they’re finding enough value in their sessions to want a record of them.
To access the Alberta Soil Information Viewer, go to: www.agric.gov.ab.ca/asic. |
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