SOILS

Soils and the soil surveys are a great tool for planning, but I always caution there use as a primary source of data because of what the soil mappers call inclusions. Inclusions are areas that may be small or large pockets within a mapped type of soil that are different than mapped. These inclusions, from my experience or numerous. It would be almost impossible for any of the soil mappers to walk and sample every 10 feet in an area to determine the soil types. This is why it is better to use the survey as an overview planning tool.
Another potential pitfall is the availability of soils information varies widely from county to county. As the text mentions the USDA –NRCS produces the soil survey in cooperation with the local governments. Just in western, NC you have a wide variety of availability. For example. Ashe County has a set of paper copies that is out of print, but Arc-Map shape file and attribute tables for all the soils that can be downloaded from the soil data mart at nrcs.gov. In Watauga County a published survey is not available. Only draft field sheets are available in hard copy from the local nrcs office. These field sheets include older symbolization that requires a cheat sheet to identify soil types on the soil data mart website.