Lake Tahoe Basin Web Soil Survey

Tahoe Basin Area Soil Survey (Updated May 2020)

This was my first experience using the resource 'Web Soil Survey' provided through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The site has 95% of the nation's most updated soil data, with anticipating having 100% in the near future. Currently, NRCS has information about every county in the United States. The site has the ability to develop custom reports addressing specific questions or concerns within a specific property (<100,000 acres), also known as the "Area of Interest/AOI".

As a beginning user of WSS, the 45-minute tutorial explained everything I would need to know to find my area of interest on the map. The Tahoe Basin has 328,118 acres within Placer county and 126,326.7 acres/38.5% of it was made up of its' watershed. I found WSS to be informative and quite helpful in being able to visualize all of the soil, sand, and gravel of the Tahoe Basin.

NRCS is an extremely important resource that has the ability to 'browse by subject' within hydrology, land-use data, soil data, and watershed boundary maps - all of which are available for download.