The Integrating Spatial Educational Experiences (Isee) web site allows anyone anywhere to access information about the soils, landscapes, and natural and man-made features of Indiana. Isee was originally conceived to support the soil, crop, and environmental science teaching program in the Agronomy Department at Purdue University. Anyone interested in Earth Science, however, is likely to find Isee interesting.
One of the focuses of Isee is on the spatial aspects of soil properties, in other words, how soil properties are distributed over large areas. In the past, soil science has focused primarily on how soil properties vary with depth at specific points in the landscape. Although the concept that soils vary in patterns across landscapes has always been a part of soil science education, teaching students how to understand these patterns was very difficult. Isee allows one to see and understand spatial patterns in the Indiana soil landscape without spending years mapping soils in the field.
Isee consists of maps from different sources, all of which are georeferenced so that each point on each map corresponds to its equivalent latitude and longitude on the Earth’s surface. Below we describe where we obtained the data on which these maps are based and the technical details describing how the maps were created.