Using the soil series finder
Eight filters, a map of where the matches are mapped and a side-by-side profile comparison. Five searches show what each part returns.
The soil series finder narrows the 90 series in this atlas by eight fields at once: the states where a series is mapped, soil order, drainage class, depth class, particle-size class, temperature regime, parent material and whether it is a state soil. It then lets you set any two typical profiles side by side at the same depth scale. Below are five searches worked through with their real results, followed by a comparison, so you know what to expect from each part of the tool.
How the filters combine
Each menu narrows the list further; a series must match every filter you set. The number in brackets after each option is how many atlas series have that value before any other filter is applied, so you can see at a glance that, say, well drained is common and very poorly drained is rare. Results are sorted largest first by mapped acres; the buttons switch to alphabetical order or to the deepest description first. The address bar keeps your choices, so you can bookmark a search or send it to someone.
Five searches and what they return
| Search | Series found | Largest match | Their mapped area |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mapped in: Iowa | 3 | Fayette | 3.54 million acres |
| Drainage: very poorly drained | 2 | Sharkey | 4.33 million acres |
| Order: Mollisols + parent material: loess | 9 | Harney | 22.00 million acres |
| Temperature regime: frigid + state soils only | 8 | Williams | 10.11 million acres |
| Mapped in: Virginia + order: Ultisols | 11 | Gilpin | 24.53 million acres |
Mapped in Iowa. Only 3 atlas series have mapped acres in Iowa: Fayette, Tama, and Lester. That looks small for a state with 541 series in its soil survey, but the atlas holds state soils and national giants, not every series in every state. The Iowa page lists the ten largest series in the state whether or not they are profiled here.
Very poorly drained. The search returns Sharkey and Bohicket. Their landform labels differ (Sharkey: flood plains, deltas/levees, ridges/interfluves, terraces; Bohicket: tidal marshes), and so do their orders, Vertisols and Entisols. The drainage guide has the counts for all seven classes.
Mollisols formed in loess. Nine series match, from Harney (3.89 million acres) down to Tama (826,703 acres). Parent material is a list, and a series matches when loess is one of the materials named, not necessarily the only one.
Frigid state soils. The frigid temperature regime alone gives 12 series; ticking “State soils only” leaves 8: Williams, Tunbridge, Kalkaska, Scobey, Marlow, Chesuncook, Antigo, and Threebear. The map then shows dots in 13 states: Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Ultisols in Virginia. Virginia is the state where the most atlas series are mapped, 18 in all, and 11 of them are Ultisols. If you change the sort to “Deepest”, Ruston moves to the top with a description that runs to 216 cm.
Reading the results
The line above the table sums up each search: how many series match, their combined mapped area, the largest and the deepest described. The table gives order, drainage, depth class, particle size, mapped acres and the number of states and territories for every match. On a phone the extra columns fold into one line under the series name.
The map puts a dot on each state where at least one matching series is mapped, and the dot grows with the number of matches. Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are listed under the map with their counts instead. Mapped acres come from SSURGO and include every state with at least one acre, so a series can show up in a state that its description does not name.
Comparing two profiles
Below the results, pick any two series, or press “Compare” on a row of the table to put that series in the first slot. Both typical pedons are drawn on one centimeter scale, each horizon at the depths given in its official description, with the horizon name and depth next to it. A short summary and a table follow. For the default pair, Cecil and Drummer, it reads:
Cecil is described to 203 cm, 51 cm deeper than Drummer (152 cm). The first B horizon (subsoil) starts at 20 cm in Cecil and at 36 cm in Drummer. Cecil is mapped on 3.7 times as many acres as Drummer (5,485,416 vs 1,496,856). They sit in different orders: Ultisols and Mollisols. No state or territory has both mapped.
The table under the drawing lines up seventeen fields, from order and subgroup to year established and type location. The depth guide explains why described depth and depth class can disagree, and the guide on reading a series name decodes the subgroup row.
What the finder does not do
The finder reports what the official series descriptions and the national soil survey say about typical soils. It does not tell you which soil is at a given address or field, and it gives no recommendation for any use of land. For a specific site, the soil survey map in the NRCS Web Soil Survey is the place to start. The finder also only covers the 90 series in this atlas; the full U.S. list has 24,791 series with mapped extent.
Sources
- USDA-NRCS Official Soil Series Descriptions (OSD), soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov
- USDA-NRCS Soil Classification (SC) database, soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov
- USDA-NRCS Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) via Soil Data Access, sdmdataaccess.sc.egov.usda.gov
- State soil list: NCSS aqp R package dataset us.state.soils, github.com/ncss-tech/aqp/blob/master/data/us.state.soils.rda
Data as of: Official Series Descriptions and Soil Classification database snapshot 2026-10-26; SSURGO tabular data as served by Soil Data Access on 2026-10-27 (survey area save dates 8/23/2026 7:48:35 PM to 10/26/2026 10:17:40 PM). Counts, ranks, medians and charts on this page were computed by Soil Series Atlas from those files. Data & method