Conservation Assessment Ranking Tool

Jason Nemecek and Steve Peaslee

March 5, 2025

The Conservation Assessment Ranking Tool (CART) is designed for use in the conservation planning process to assess resource concerns, planned practices, and site vulnerability. It ranks applications for conservation programs and provides conservation planners with information on existing and future resource concerns.

This documentation describes the SQL queries that access soils data for CART. The queries described in this documentation run through the Soil Data Access web service and are specifically written to support CART.

Structured Query Language (SQL) script for the Conservation Assessment Ranking Tool: Soil.

1. SQL Server version: Click here
2. Soil Data Access SQL version: Click here
3. Area of Interest (AOI) Geometry examples to copy into the SQL script: Click here
4. Prototype: Click here
5. Prototype2: Click here
6. Prototype3: Click here

The soils data used in CART can be found in four main sections.

1. Resource Assessment (Resource Concerns);
   • Soil Quality Degradation
   • Other
2. EP—Easement Program
3. EE—Environmental Evaluation
4. Outcome Results (Under Development)

	Datasets	Purpose*	Documentation	Section
1	Ponding or Flooding	RA, EP	Click here	Excess Water-Ponding and Flooding, Easements
2	Depth to Water Table	RA, EP	Click here	Excess Water-Seasonal High Water Table, Easements
3	Hydric Rating by Map Unit	RA, EP	Click here	Excess Water: Seeps; Air Quality: Emissions of Greenhouse Gases; Easements
4	Nitrogen Leaching	RA	Click here	Future Development (Water Quality-Diffuse Nutrient, Pesticide and Pathogens Transport to Surface Water)
5	Farmland Classification	EE, EP	Click here	Easements; Environmental Evaluation
6	Available Water Storage	EP	Click here	Easements
7	Soil Organic Carbon Stock	RA, EP	Click here	Easements; Air Quality: Emissions of Greenhouse Gases
8	Drainage Class	EP	Click here	Easements
9	Organic Soils	RA	See 'Hydric Rating by Mapunit'	---
10	Agricultural Organic Soil Subsidence	RA	Click here	Soil Quality Degradation: Subsidence
11	Soil Susceptibility to Compaction	RA	Click here	Soil Quality Degradation:Compaction
12	Soil Susceptibility Organic Matter Depletion	RA	Click here	Soil Quality Degradation:Organic Matter Depletion
13	Surface Salt Concentration	RA	Click here	Soil Quality Degradation:Concentration of Salts and Other Chemicals
14	Limitation for Aerobic Soil Organisms	RA	Click here	Soil Quality Degradation:Soil Organism Habitat Loss and Degradation
15	Aggregate stability	RA	Click here	Soil Quality Degradation:Aggregate Instability
16	Domain Tables	---	Click here	---
17	Soil Property List by Interpretation	---	Click here	---
18	Soil Property List and Column Descriptions	---	Click here	---
19	Data Checks	---	Click here	---
20	Outcomes	---	Click here	---
21	Future Development	---	Click here	---
22	CART User’s Guide	---	Click here	---
23	CART Overview	---	Click here	---
24	Soil Data Access Metrics	---	Click here	---

*RA—Resource Assessment; EP—Easement Program; EE—Environmental Evaluation; RT—Ranking Tool

Soil properties can be divided into two broad categories: intrinsic and non-intrinsic. Intrinsic soil properties are those empirical soil properties that are not based on any other soil properties. Non-intrinsic soil properties involve calculations that are based on measured or observed soil properties.

Resource Concerns

Soil Quality Degradation

CART evaluates six resource concerns related to soil quality degradation. Each involves analysis of soil interpretation data from the Soil Data Access Query service. Soil maps and reports for these resource concerns are generated dynamically for each land unit being assessed.

	Resource Concerns	Related Soil Interpretation
1	Subsidence	Agricultural Organic Soil Subsidence
2	Compaction	Soil Susceptibility to Compaction
3	Organic Matter Depletion	Organic Matter Depletion
4	Concentration of Salts and Other Chemicals	Surface Salt Concentration
5	Soil organism habitat loss or degradation	Suitability for Aerobic Soil Organisms
6	Aggregate instability	Aggregate stability

Soil Data Access Requests by CART

1. The request for soils data begins once land units have been selected (fig. 1).
2. The request is in the form of an SQL query and contains:
   • Land unit identifier
   • Bounding coordinates
3. CART automatically sends the request to Soil Data Access Query Service.
4. Map layers are processed in the background and are not displayed.

Figure 1.—This map is here to show you a landunit in Park County, Wyoming.

MAP DATA PROCESSING

Figure 2.—A map of the soils in the selected area and a map showing the soil interpretation for surface salt concentration.

Map data is processed in the background. In figure 2, the map on the left shows 8 different soils within a land unit. The map on the right illustrates risk of surface salinization. The red polygons indicate the most severe areas and are assigned a rating of 1. The map is not intended for on-screen display in CART, but the information from these background map layers is used to calculate the final resource concern rating.

Service Data

In the following table, the query service returned soils information for ”Risk of Surface Salt Concentration” within the land unit. The soil interpretation rating was used to calculate the CART resource concern rating.

Areas with the highest risk are assigned a rating of 1. Areas with a lower risk are assigned a larger rating number. Rating values are calculated using soils data at the component level.

Land unit Detailed Ratings

The service request calculates the rolling sum values for rating acres and rating percent for each resource concern and finds the single most limiting rating (per land unit) that comprises at least 10 percent of the landunit area or 10 acres, whichever is less.

In this example, the most limiting rating that meets these criteria is the second row. This rating is provided to the CART application as the land unit rating for Concentration of Salts and Other Chemicals.

Final Land unit Ratings

For each of the resource concerns, the final land unit ratings (which are derived from Soil Data Access) are returned to CART for awarding of points. The publication date of the soils data is also returned for display.

The following domain table contains an ordered list of all possible rating values.

EASEMENTS

Click a heading below for specific information on a listed query.

1. Soil Organic Carbon Stock
2. Farmland Classification
3. Hydric Soil Rating by Map Unit
4. Ponding or Flooding Frequency
5. Depth to Water Table
6. Drainage Class
7. Available Water Storage

Environmental Evaluation (CPA-52)

Click a heading below for specific information on a listed query.

1. Farmland Classification
2. Hydric Soils Rating by Mapunit

Outcomes

The programming proposed for outcomes is intended to provide NRCS leadership with the ability to model data and report the natural resource impacts and outcomes of conservation practices, systems, and projects. The integration of outcomes into CART is still under development.

1. Outcomes Design Concept: Click here
2. Data connections (CART-NPAD): Click here

Acknowledgements

1. Steve Campbell: Soil Scientist, NRCS
2. Skye Wills: Soil Scientist, NRCS
3. Chad Volkman: Cartographer, NRCS
4. Phil Anzel: Senior Software Developer, Vistronix
5. Susan McGlasson: Database Administrator, Vistronix
6. Bob Dobos: Soil Scientist, NRCS
7. Cathy Seybold: Soil Scientist, NRCS
8. Jeff Thomas: Soil Scientist, NRCS
9. Mike Robotham: National Leader for Technical Soil Services, NRCS
10. Laura Morton: Management Analyst, NRCS
11. Aaron Lauster: National Sustainable Agriculture Leader, NRCS
12. Casey Sheley: Natural Resource Specialist, NRCS
13. Eric Hesketh: Soil Scientist, NRCS
14. Greg Zwicke: Environmental Engineer, NRCS
15. Matt Flint: Natural Resource Specialist, NRCS
16. Danielle Balduff: Natural Resource Specialist, NRCS
17. Breanna Barlow: Management Analyst, NRCS
18. Barry Fisher: Central Region Soil Health Team Leader, NRCS
19. Robin Plummer: Developer, NRCS
20. Aaron Bustamante:
21. Pam Thomas: Associate Director of Soil Survey Programs, NRCS

With support from the Resource Concern Team and Workgroups.