Earth Team Volunteers Help USDA Soil Scientists Collect Data in Remote Minnesota

USDA Blog Post:

Posted by Julie MacSwain and Michelle Banks, Natural Resources Conservation Service, on April 7, 2014 at 2:00 PM

Earth Team volunteer Meghan Zenner assisted NRCS soil scientists with taking soil samples in a remote forest in Minnesota. Photo from NRCS.

A group of dedicated volunteers helped make it possible for soil scientists with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to collect soil samples in remote parts of Minnesota.

Today kicks off National Volunteer Week, and NRCS is celebrating the hard work of Earth Team volunteers like the seven people in Minnesota who aided in the soil survey.

Earth Team volunteers, the agency’s volunteer corps, make a big difference, said Larissa Schmitt, a soil scientist with NRCS. “The volunteers’ wilderness skills were a huge time savings to the soil scientists,” she said.

Seven volunteers logged 510 hours of service in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for assisting Schmitt and other NRCS staff on five expeditions last year. The volunteers included Aaron Janz, Dennis Meinert, Timothy Nigh, Kyle Lilly, Kim Steffen, Jeffery Albers and Meghan Zenner.

The area is composed of a million acres in northeastern Minnesota and is managed by the U.S. Forest Service. NRCS and the Forest Service partnered to collect soils data for 595,000 acres with more than 200 sample points.

“One of the biggest challenges is the remoteness of the area that can only be reached by either canoe or on foot,” Schmitt said.

The expeditions ranged from five to 10 days with average work days of 10 hours. Earth Team volunteers assisted NRCS soil scientists by navigating, paddling canoes, bushwhacking to sample points, carrying soil sampling tools, digging soil pits and recording soil data.  After work hours, volunteers cooked by campfire, chopped fire wood, hung bear bats and kept the camp clean.

This soil sampling project is a national pilot project for digitally mapping soils to create digital soil survey products. As NRCS moves ahead with more soil products, lessons learned from the project are invaluable, Schmitt said. This is all part of NRCS’ Web Soil Survey, which provides free soils information online.

This group of dedicated volunteers won Earth Team’s Group Volunteer Award for their region. Read about the other award winners.

Individuals from all walks of life donate their time to NRCS. These diverse skill sets help NRCS with its mission of “Helping People Help the Land.”

Volunteers can help with almost any task that an NRCS employee does as part of his or her job duties. From soil sampling in the wilderness to preparing accounting paperwork, volunteers help NRCS get conservation on the ground. Even virtual volunteering is possible.

In the past fiscal year, more than 22,000 Earth Team volunteers donated more than 330,000 hours of their time to Earth Team. These hours are valued at more than $7.3 million.

To learn more about how you can volunteer in your area or to read about other volunteers, visit nrcs.usda.gov/EarthTeam.

The Modern Farmer and USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service

USDA Blog Post:

Posted by Elisa O'Halloran, National Webmaster, Natural Resources Conservation Service, on March 31, 2014 at 11:00 AM

The Get Started page is a new addition to the NRCS website, and it provides the steps to assistance.

For generations, children have been singing about the farmer, his wife and kids, and even the mouse and the cheese. But today, a modern farmer is more likely to be using the mouse on his computer (or more realistically, a smartphone or tablet) than dancing around a small wooded valley with his family and farm animals.

The website of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, nrcs.usda.gov, has been evolving to keep pace with the needs of today’s farmer. Our mission is to provide American farmers, ranchers and other visitors with the tools and resources they are looking for on a site that is easy to use and navigate.

The most effective websites combine clear and readable text, usability, functionality and simple navigation. We write the text for targeted audiences, which for us includes farmers and ranchers as well as people who use our online tools, such as Web Soil Survey, PLANTS database and COMET-Farm^TM.

Recently, we created a new Get Started with NRCS page. This new webpage helps farmers, ranchers and forest landowners learn how they can make improvements to their land with conservation.

This webpage provides the five steps to getting assistance from NRCS, so that farmers, ranchers and forest landowners can know about the process of applying for assistance from the comfort of their own home, barn, tractor or wherever else they hop online.

Also, we want to point you to our revamped About NRCS and Drought Resources pages as well as our newly created Resources for Small Farms page. About NRCS provides an overview of what NRCS offers, including those popular tools that bring many visitors to our website.

Drought Resources houses information on assistance and resources that can help farmers and ranchers be more resilient to drought. And finally, the Resources for Small Farms page pulls together information and resources that may be of interest to owners and managers of smaller farms, such as information on organics and seasonal high tunnels.

We use a number of tools to help us create these pages, including site traffic and customer experience information. We’ve found that more than 61 percent of people coming to our website were new visitors, many of whom were farmers, ranchers and forest landowners looking for information on conservation programs.

We have about 13,000 visits per day on the NRCS website, and some of our most popular pages deal with soils, Web Soil Survey and Farm Bill.

We hope you enjoy these new and revamped pages, and we welcome feedback on how we can improve our “digital” service center. We’re excited to have the opportunity to help you get started with NRCS!