This dataset created by the Native Lands Advocacy Project contains spatial and tabular data derived from the NRCS's 2020 national SSURGO soils database and has been formatted to include only data within current American Indian areas for the conterminous United States. Boundary data was acquired from the US Census Bureau's Tiger Database (2010) reported by the federally recognized tribal governments through the Census Bureau's Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS) and includes a total of 549 areas associated with 398 unique American Indian groups. The boundary data includes all Indian Lands defined by CFR 25 CFR § 502.12 which includes both lands held in trust by the United States Government and fee lands within the boundaries of American Indian Lands encompassing a total of 109,465,623 acres of land. The spatial data includes each soil unit and its associated MUKEY making it possible to join this data with other GSSURGO soil characteristics tables.
According to the NRCS4, "The SSURGO database provides the most detailed level of information and was designed primarily for farm and ranch, landowner/user, township, county, or parish natural resource planning and management. Using the soil attributes, this database serves as an excellent source for determining erodible areas and developing erosion control practices; reviewing site development proposals and land use potential; making land use assessments and chemical fate assessments; and identifying potential wetlands and sand and gravel aquifer areas." The NRCS's
SSURGO data is used in numerous land valuation, carbon and hydrologic assessment models including the proprietary AcreValue™ valuation estimation tool5, NRCS's Rapid Carbon Assessment RaCa6, the EPA's Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment (AGWA), and the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), to name a few.
