Missouri Association of Professional Soil Scientists

To Advance The Knowledge And Wise Use Of Our Soil Resources

Dear friends, colleagues, and other interested parties,
We are celebrating a centennial this year, and that is of the endeavor that we all have had the pleasure and privilege of continuing toward it's eventual conclusion, which is tentatively expected to be around 2002 in Missouri. But is it really a conclusion? The National Cooperative Survey began one hundred years ago, and a lot has changed in that time, in the field, in the office, and in the lab. Advances in the field of soil science, as well as advances (and sometimes retreats) in agriculture and other land uses have meant changes to soils data needs. How we will be able to address these needs in the future depends on what steps are taken now.

To facilitate the exploration of these issues, we in Missouri have the privilege to play host to the 1999 National Cooperative Soil Survey Conference. The theme is "Back to the Future, A Centennial Celebration of Service to the Nation". Topics planned for presentation include reviews of soil survey activities both throughout the United States and abroad, soil surveys for environmental problems, training and marketing soil scientists for the future, and selling soil science to society.

The conference will be at the Holiday Inn Select Downtown Convention Center in St. Louis from Sunday, June 27 until Friday, July 2. All are encouraged to attend. MAPSS will be working the registration table. Anyone interested in helping out with that, please let me know. The blkPSS Summer Meeting is planned to be held at the conference after the social event on Monday evening. Further details on cost and registration will be forthcoming.

The MAPSS Fall Meeting is tentatively scheduled for early October in Rolla. We hope to include a float trip at that time. In addition to the usual events, (meetings, elections, barbecue and beverages) we are anticipating an exploration of how to acquire liability insurance for those of us who do work as independent soil consultants.

The other project we are working on this year is the development of information concerning the Second Generation Soil Survey, what it is, and why it is needed. It is expected that this will be presented to the Missouri State Legislature to foster support for this endeavor in the future.

The executive committee unanimously agreed to the following chairmanships for the MAPSS committees: Finance - John Preston; Constitution - Tom DeWitt; Membership - Dennis Meinert; Education - Leon Thompson; Ethics and Certification - Dave Skaer; Nominations - Scott Eversoll.

That sums up what we resolved at the Executive Committee meeting last month. I look forward to meeting you in St. Louis.

The Fall MAPSS meeting began on the morning of December 5, at 9:00 a.m. The morning was spent with a surface tour of the Ozark Underground Laboratory highlighting the relationships of the surface and water movement with the underground system and water movement. Tom Aley, owner of the cave and laboratory, conducted the tour.

Following a sack lunch (and the issuing of flashlights to those members who did not pay attention to the instructions in the last issue of the PROBAUGER) the tour moved underground. For approximately 3 hours, 25 MAPSS members and guests bravely descended into the bowels of the Earth and followed Tom through his cave observing water movement, bear scratchings, cave worms, quarters, dead bats, stalactites, stalagmites, other sorts of geologic wonders, and visually challenged cave salamanders. Pretty neat stuff! You missed out if you did not attend.

Next came the social hour and dinner at Cookie's in Theodosia and the MAPSS business meeting (see notes elsewhere) The after dinner speaker was Jim vancey, from DNR Parks and Historical Preservation. He gave a good presentation on caves and cave exploration, both in Missouri and his experiences with an unexplored cave in New Mexico.

Meeting called to order by President Scott Eversoll on the evening of December 5, 1998, following the tour of the cave. Treasure 5 report was submitted by Treasurer Richard Tummons and approved by the members. David Skaer gave a report on Certification.

A motion was made and approved to donate $500 to the SMSU soil judging team, the only university level soil judging team in the state. A motion was made and approved to spend up to $200 for lunch for a meeting to discuss the future of soil surveys in Missouri. Dennis Potter will set up the meeting. A motion was made for MAPSS to assist with the registration for the NCSS meeting that will be held in St. Louis in June of 1999.

Tony Dohman gave an update on the state of Missouri's new regulations and registration requirements for doing on-sites for waste disposal. David Skaer was elected vice-president, Ken Gregg was elected member-at-large. A presentation was given to honor Ken Benham for his retirement from the NRCS.

Meeting adjourned.

As most of you know, I concluded a 35 year career as a soil mapper at the nd of 1998. I decided to write an article about how I got into this work; nd about some of the changes that I have seen during my career.

grew up on a little rocky dairy farm of the west edge of the Ozarks, almost on the contact between the Pennsylvanian and Mississippian geologic ormations. Farming was the only thing that I knew, but I had no future in hat as a career. The operation barely supported my parents. My most nfluential teacher in high school was the vocational agriculture teacher. He pushed most of his students to go to college, if he thought they had a chance of making it there. This was in the 1950's, when there were no uidance (career) counselors in most Missouri school systems. My ~riculture teacher was a graduate of the University of Missouri, and he got quite a number of kids from my high school enrolled in that institution duiring his teaching tenure. He was personally acquainted with someone in he admissions office. This fellow had some influence over the awarding of Lirator's scholarships. Each spring my teacher would write a letter to this ~rson and provide a list of his students that he expected to enroll at he University for the fall semester. Somehow, quite a few of us got ~rator's scholarships our freshman year.

I was the first one from my family to enroll in college. I thought you had to declare a major or they wouldn't let you in school. I scanned the~list f possible majors, and down near the bottom I saw "Soils", so that's what wrote down. I had been on the FFA soils team and it had been a rather ~ustrating experience. I would do pretty well at one contest, then not very well at the next one. It seemed like I couldn't transfer what I ~arned at one contest to another one that was 100 to 200 miles away. The ~rned soils always looked different at the next contest. I thought that as soils major maybe I could at least figure out what my problem had been. I was assigned to the one and only Dr. Woodruff for a college advisor. He was colorful fellow who took an interest in his advisees. He helped me quite bit.

I was planning to take general courses for a couple of years, find out what really liked to do and change majors. I did find something I liked after couple of years; it was chemistry. Just before I changed my major to chemistry, something else happened. I didn't have a summer job lined up one spring. I was talking to one of the older fellows in class one day, and he suggested that I try for a job as a Student Trainee for the Soil conservation Service. I asked, "Who are they; and what do they do?" He said that most of the employees work with individual landowners, however with my major I should apply for a job as a Soil Scientist. The title sounded pretty impressive to me and the state office was right there in Columbia. I went by a few days later and picked up some forms. A couple of months and the Civil Service test later I had a summer job. I reported for my first day as a Soil Scientist on 6/03/63 at Fulton, Missouri. The rest is history. I never did change my major to chemistry, but I did have 32 credit hours of chemistry when I graduated. I didn't have that many hours of soils. If I had made a career in the chemistry field, I would have almost cerrtainly spent most of my career indoors. As a Soil Scientist, I have been able to enjoy lots of fresh air and sunshine and I even got paid for it.

Here are some of the changes that I have seen in 35 years. Our hand digging tools haven't evolved too much, except that we now use a ship auger in place of the solid center auger that was used when I started. Also, the backsaver probe was invented and it proved to be a real help in some parts of the state. We used to measure slopes with abney levels. The abney level required the use of both hands, so you always had to lay down your tools to use it. The clinometer is smaller and handier to carry and use. When I started we were mapping on 4" per mile photos, with four sections per field sheet. I think those were much better photos than the ones we use now. The older photos had a much sharper image, the emulsion was easier to draw on, and the scale was much easier for most users to interpret. The argument for changing to our present map scale was so the soils maps, the topo maps, and the geology maps would all be at the same scale. In my experience, the users of the soils maps never cared whether the other two maps were at the same scale. However, almost all of them would have preferred larger scale soil maps. Maybe that situation will change when all of the maps are loaded into ARCVIEW.

The larger tools have changed much more than the hand tools. Our soil pits used to be dug with a shovel, a sharpshooter, and a pick. The backhoes represent major progress. Our transportation in my early years was 2-door station wagons, olive drab in color, with 6-cylinder engines and a 3-speed on the column. I am now driving the only 4-wheel drive of my career. There isn't much similarity between what we drive now and what we had when I started. I have always felt that Missouri was about 20 years too late in going to 4-wheel drive pickups for soil scientists. We changed from cars to pickups in the early 60's. Soon after that we started getting a few hydraulic probes. Many of the first ones were worn out cast off units other states gave us when they got their new units. We figured they were better than nothing. I haven't seen our newest hydraulic probes in action, but I understand that they will dig through a fragipan. In the past, fragipans just laughed at our truck mounted probes. I suppose I shouldn't close this paragraph without mentioning computers. When I started, the only computers I was aware of took up a whole room, and they had no contact with me. That was the good old days. Now the durned things have virtually invaded my life, whether I like it or not. In the old days, soil survey reports were written by hand. You sat down at your desk in the middle of winter with a new tablet and a half dozen sharp pencils and started writing. Six weeks later the report was written and ready for proof reading. The way that I understand the new system, you spend 18 months entering all of your documentation into NASIS, then the computer writes the report, and you spend six weeks editing it. Isn't progress amazing!

My crystal ball wasn't too clear at the start of my career. I didn't spend much time thinking about blackberry thickets, multiflora rose thickets, ticks and chiggers, barbed wire fences, old strands of wire nearly buried in the undergrowth, heat and humidity, logs that break when you are crossing a stream on them, and unfriendly landowners. I'll expand a bit on the last subject. When I first started, there would be two or three people in a county that didn't want a soil mapper on their place. Now there are 50 times that many landowners that say "stay off". Our work basically hasn't changed. What has changed is the public's attitude about the Government. For a lot of them, the Government is their adversary, not their friend. I can envision lots of problems with landowners when we start collecting documentation for our updated surveys.

The nation wide soil survey project was started in the late 1950's. The field work in the first Missouri county that was part of that project was completed in 1962. I started working on soil surveys in 1963. I retired at the end of 1998. The mapping of Missouri will be completed in the next few years. I couldn't have picked a better time to be involved with this work. I was able to work with a lot of nice people over the years. Some are now retired, and some are still on the job. For those of you still mapping, just keep on keeping on. Don't worry about job security. The next big earthquake in the bootheel is due at any time. When it's over, you all can go down there and remap the delta at a scale of 1:12,000, which is just right for irrigation planning.

An accountant is someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant.

An auditor is someone who arrives after the battle and bayonets all of the wounded.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

A programmer is someone who solves a problem you didn't know you had (Y2K?) in a way you don't understand.

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000 word document and calls it a "brief". (Franz Kafka)

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.

A schoolteacher is a disillusioned person who used to think they liked children.

A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time.

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.