The National Soil Information System (NASIS): Designing soil interpretation classes for military land-use predictions

The focus of the National Cooperative Soil Survey is shifting from producing static, printed soil survey reports to providing a dynamic resource of soils information for a wide range of needs. The National Soil Information System (NASIS) is the core component of this vision and is designed to manage and maintain soil data from collection to dissemination. NASIS supports this conceptual shift in three important areas: (1) collection of new information in compliance with standards, (2) application of expert knowledge to make information usable for a variety of purposes, and (3) dissemination of information to a wide variety of users. This paper demonstrates the use of NASIS for evaluating the suitability of military lands for vehicle related land-use activities.