Borderline soil

Open the following page:

https://enviroatlas.epa.gov/enviroatlas/interactivemap/

Select the centre button labelled ‘Learn’.

From the Featured Collection on the left, select the one with the title ‘Nitrogen Inputs to Watersheds’.

Click on the ‘View in GeoPlatform’ button.

On the right-hand side, click on ‘Open in Map Viewer’:

In this exercise, we will look at the soil in the area between Denver and Kansas City. To do this, we use the search menu (icon on the right: magnifying glass) and enter ‘Denver’.

We add a topographical base map to the map (menu on the left: Basemap >> Top):

If we zoom out of the map, we see a lot of fertiliser input in the area northeast of Denver:

With the help of Google Earth, we want to take a closer look at the area.
Link: https://earth.google.com/

It is clear that there is a lot of agriculture in the area.

To estimate the amount of fertiliser in heavily influenced areas, we use the ‘Area measurement tool’ (on the right-hand side, icon: spanner) and the information in the legend.

We use metric units to determine the area of a strongly influenced region.

To find out the amount of fertiliser used, all we have to do is click on the relevant region and read the value in kilograms (per hectare and year).

This shows once again how important it is that our students routinely master basic skills (such as: How many hectares are in one square kilometre?) and are able to perform the simplest mathematical calculations.