This map displays the distribution of organic soils in the agricultural region of Alberta. Organic soils consist of layers of material with greater than 30 percent organic matter and a total thickness of greater than 40 cm. Organic soils are generally saturated with water for most of the year unless drained. Saturation inhibits decomposition and encourages continued accumulation of organic material. Drainage of these soils can result in a rapid increase in decomposition and a reduction in the thickness of the organic material. This resource was created in 2002 using ArcGIS.

This map displays the distribution of Solonetzic soils in the agricultural region of Alberta. Solonetzic soils have developed on saline parent material that is high in sodium and have a characteristic hardpan layer that has formed in the subsoil. This hardpan is very hard when dry and has low permeability when wet. This results in restricted root and water penetration that may limit the productivity of these soils. Solonetzic soils occur in association with Chernozemic soils and, to a lesser extent, with Luvisolic soils.The Agricultural Region of Alberta Soil Inventory Database (AGRASID) soil landscape polygons that contained soils belonging to the Solonetzic Order were identified, and the areal extent of these soils was represented as a percentage of the total area using the following classes: greater than 30, 10 to 30 and less than 10. This resource was created in 2002 using ArcGIS.

The “Thematic Soil Maps of Manitoba” is a revised and condensed version of the Manitoba Detailed Soils Database produced by CANSIS. It contains data relating to the soils slope, drainage, agricultural capability, erosion potential, and surface texture.

The data represents the occurrence of saline soils in the agricultural area of Alberta. A Saline Soils is a non-alkali (pH less than 8.5 and exchangeable-sodium less than 15%) soil containing soluble salts in great enough quantities that they interfere with the growth of most crop plants. This resource was created in 2002 using ArcGIS.

Level below which soil or rock is saturated with water, in the well and at the time the level has been measured, expressed in m above the sea level. Groundwater levels measured are interpolated / extrapolated to obtain groundwater level on every cell of the hydrogeological unit raster. Surfer and ArcGis are the software usually used to create groundwater level raster. The dataset designates a raster with a groundwater level, for each cell of the hydrogeological unit.

This data series represents the volumetric soil moisture (percent saturated soil) for the surface layer (<5 cm). The data is created daily and is averaged for the ISO standard week and month. The data is produced from passive microwave satellite data collected by the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite and converted to soil moisture using version 6.20 of the SMOS soil moisture processor.The data are produced by the European Space Agency and obtained under a Category 1 proposal for Level 2 soil moisture data. The data are gridded to a resolution of 0.25 degrees. Data quality flags have been applied to remove areas where rainfall is present during the acquisition, where snow cover is detected and when Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) is above an acceptable threshold.

This map displays the percentage of organic matter in the surface layer of cultivated soils in the agricultural region of Alberta. Soil organic matter (SOM) is derived primarily from the decomposition of plant biomass. SOM improves both the physical and chemical properties of soil and has beneficial effects on agricultural soil quality. SOM is reported on the map as a percentage using the following classes: less than 2 (very low), 2 to 4 (low), 4 to 6 (medium), 6 to 8 (high) and greater than 8 (very high).This resource was created in 2002 using ArcGIS.

The land features of the CanVec series contains landscape features of Canada such as islands, shoreline delineation, wooded areas, saturated soil features, landform features (esker, sand, etc.).The CanVec multiscale series is available as prepackaged downloadable files and by user-defined extent via a Geospatial data extraction tool.Related Products (Open Maps Links):[Topographic Data of Canada - CanVec Series](https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/8ba2aa2a-7bb9-4448-b4d7-f164409fe056)

The ‘Land use allocation to Soils and Landforms by year’ dataset links agricultural land use activities to soils and landscapes within Soil Landscapes of Canada (SLC) polygons. The land use allocations to soils area datasets were generated on an annual time step (1971-2015). Agricultural land use is categorized and allocated based on the following general land use types: Annual cropland, Perennial cropland, Specialty Crops, Improved pasture and Unimproved Pasture.

The Soils Parent Materials raster prediction surface was crated using a Random Forest classifier trained with single component polygons from soils, terrain and ecosystem mapping projects, and 18 topographic predictor layers derived from the provincial 25m DEM. It is a prediction of mode of deposition of the soils parent material. The model was run by Ecoprovince and also enforced topographic constraints on some materials. The results of the Ecoprovince models were compiled into a provincial raster layer. The methodology and results are described in the research paper, Improved Soil Mapping in British Columbia, Canada with Legacy Soil Data and Random Forest Digital Soil Mapping Across Paradigms, Scales and Boundaries, 2016, ISBN : 978-981-10-0414-8 C. Bulmer, M. G. Schmidt, B. Heung, C. Scarpone, J. Zhang, D. Filatow, M. Finvers, S. Berch, S. Smith, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0415-5_24. This layer is used in the [Soils Information Finder Tool](https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/af8c3ff1-c64c-4ee5-9412-f02a85bbbfec).