BOARD01111

• Board Meeting Date: 6/3/1970
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

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to 93 soil conservation districts. These dis-
tricts substantially cover all of the private
land in the state and a vast majority of federal
land. Over 20,000 farmers and ranchers in the
state are district cooperators. The Service I
maintains a state ,office at Denver, area offices
at Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, Durango,
La Junta, Denver and Sterling. There are 64
work unit offices for direct assistance to dis-
tricts. The Service presently has a personnel
ceiling of 343 in the state. I might add that
this is approximately 50 less than we had two
years ago.

Soil surveys are an integral part of our
national program. This is authorized under
Public Law 46; We have the national responsi-
bility for a nation-wide soil survey program.
Soil surveys meet the immediate needs of the
soil conservation districts and'others for soil
and water conservation programs. Soil surveys
provide information, interpreted in terms of
land capability, range sites, woodland suit-
ability, and other interpretative groupings, as
a basis for ~onservation planning in soil con-
servation districts. District cooperators use
this interpretative map as a guide for develop-
ing their individual ' conservation plans.

Soil survey work includes basis and applied
investigations in soils. Investigations are
essential to the correct classification and
national correlation of soils to the inter-
pretation of the survey information, and to the
development of principles 'and techniques of soil
management and conservation.

Actually a soil conservation program has I'
been going on in the Department of Agriculture
since 1899. Formerly the work was done directly
with the experiment stations at the state level.

Soil surveys are completed on about a
million and a half acres annually in Colorado.
A total of over 24 million acres in Colorado
have soil surveys.