Groundwork NOVA

Organizations Summary

A Focus on Oaks and Maples

Dendrology

Invasive Plant Survey

Web Soil Survey

Here is the area of the Soil Web Survey I looked at.  Ivy Hill Cemetery is the open space in the center of the selection and contains the following soil types:  92B, 71D + 72B. 

A closer look at these soil types:

The Soil Web Survey allowed me to dive into further explorations of the relationship of soil and space use.  I choose to look further at Foresetland Productivity as that is one of the highlights of Ivy Hill Cemetery, the historical oak-dominated forest ecosystem.

Conclusion:
I love the idea of the soil that saved the world!  Soil needs more respect and acknowledge and I believe that the Soil Web Survey and an accessible application that gives practitioners from a variety of fields really great information that will allow them to make more informed decisions.
As a soon to be landscape architect I found lots of value in this application.  I would go as far to say that a soil survey should be included in the history and research of all design projects.  When you are in the site planning stages of a project the WSS would allow you to make design decisions based on soil characteristics and use.  It gives you the ability to draw conclusions about the water table, percolation rates, flood-plains, etc.  All really important information to consider when designing.  I think the ability to import an AOI from GIS data is a very valuable tool.
As a natural resources practitioner, I think that time shots would be great! If you can see how the built/occupied environment has changed the soil makeup/distribution over time that would be quite valuable data, allowing us to make more informed planning decisions in the long run.

It was good to learn about the categories of soil:
Mono taxa vs. Multi taxa
Major components vs. Minor components
Similar vs. Dissimilar

One of many questions:  How is the soil data collected? 

Weather and Climate

Weather Underground is a great day to day weather snapshot site. What they call hyper local weather allows you to take micro-climates across a specific region or sub-region—which could be very helpful in prediction and following species in an area. It also has an interactive satellite map which makes you feel like you are in a real weather room and a popular cities capability so you can monitor your favorite places globally all with a quick glance.
Check out their site here: https://www.wunderground.com/ 

Climate.gov provides data snapshots, data gallery and a climate dashboard. The information here is visualization heavy, so it is great if you need to include graphs or charts with any research you are doing and it also has a teaching climate section that provides a lot of information about climate literacy and provides teaching resources.
Check out their site here: https://www.climate.gov/maps-data

The University of Virginia Climatology Office is unique in that it has links to all sorts of other information, such as general climate, drought, fall foliage, astronomical information, lightning, etc. I will definitely be referring back to this site for information both locally and for camping adventures across VA. While collection of information is great, a lot of their links need to updated. Check out their site here: http://climate.virginia.edu/online_data.htm