The ground, read in long form.
Data-driven analysis of America's soils - infrastructure risk, organic-matter loss, terrain methods, and the survey data behind every Lab10YR product. Each piece opens the working analysis on lab10yr.com.
Computer Vision Is Now Classifying Soil Texture From Field Photos
Deep learning reads soil texture from smartphone photos at 78% accuracy - but the 60,000 lab-verified KSSL pedons and free SSURGO polygons remain the ground truth that makes those predictions defensible.
Read the analysis ↗Soil Depth Prediction From LiDAR: What the Terrain Tells You Before You Dig
Terrain curvature from LiDAR predicts depth to bedrock within 30 cm at 70% of tested Appalachian and Rocky Mountain sites - screening soil depth before a costly geotechnical study.
Read the analysis ↗The Ground Under Data Center Alley Was Never Meant to Hold It
A fuzzy-logic suitability model run against the national soil survey finds Data Center Alley in Loudoun County is only 39% buildable - the dirt under hyperscale is a budget line item the industry rarely names.
Read the analysis ↗Topographic Wetness Index: The Terrain Derivative That Predicts Soil Drainage
TWI, derived from a 1-meter LiDAR elevation model, predicts SSURGO drainage class with ~80% accuracy and flags probable hydric soils before any field delineation dollar is spent.
Read the analysis ↗Multispectral Drones Are Measuring What Soil Labs Miss
Multispectral drones map soil organic matter at 5-cm resolution for a fraction of lab cost - but the reflectance only becomes a defensible carbon number when calibrated against KSSL chemistry.
Read the analysis ↗What InSAR Sees That SSURGO Already Predicted
Sentinel-1 InSAR now measures millimeter-scale subsidence across American cities - but in most documented cases the soil beneath was already rated settlement-prone in SSURGO decades earlier.
Read the analysis ↗The Septic System Failure Map Nobody Publishes
Where hydric, slowly-permeable soils make septic systems fail is already mapped in SSURGO - a failure map nobody bothers to publish.
Read the analysis ↗The Carbon Beneath America's Peatlands Is Not Accounted For
109 million acres of hydric soils store carbon that drained peatlands release fast - a stock that is largely missing from the national accounting.
Read the analysis ↗Road Salts Are Destroying Urban Soils and Nobody Is Measuring It
De-icing salt degrades urban soil structure for years after it is applied, yet almost nobody measures the cumulative damage to the ground beneath the pavement.
Read the analysis ↗Precision Agriculture Without Soil Data Is Just Precision Guessing
Variable-rate prescriptions built without the soil survey underneath are just precision guessing - the public data that grounds them is already mapped to the parcel.
Read the analysis ↗LiDAR Terrain Derivatives Are the Best Soil Survey Tool Nobody Uses
Slope, curvature, and wetness derived from LiDAR are among the most powerful soil-mapping tools available - and almost nobody outside the survey uses them.
Read the analysis ↗Hydric Soils and Wetland Regulation: The Map That Determines Your Permit
A Section 404 wetland permit averages $2.2M and 18 months - and hydric-soil mapping is the map that decides whether your site needs one at all.
Read the analysis ↗Forest Soil Compaction Is an Invisible Tax on Timber Productivity
Soil compaction from harvest traffic is an invisible tax on future timber yield - and the soils most at risk are flagged in data foresters rarely open.
Read the analysis ↗Why Wind Farm Micrositing Needs Soil Science
SSURGO drainage class, linear extensibility, and settlement ratings tell a developer which turbine positions need a million-dollar pile foundation and which need a mat - before any borings are drilled.
Read the analysis ↗What Pipeline Operators Don't Know About Soil Corrosivity
13.3% of rated SSURGO map units carry a Fragile-or-higher index - 28,122 map units nationwide. The corrosivity ratings operators rarely pull are already in the public survey.
Read the analysis ↗Nevada and Arizona Are Running Out of Stable Ground
Across the desert Southwest, expansive and collapsible soils are quietly raising the cost of finding stable ground for the next round of build-out.
Read the analysis ↗How to Query 967,000 Soil Records in 30 Seconds
A 276-script SQL library over 967,000 soil records returns a parcel-level answer in about 30 seconds - the workflow behind every map on the site.
Read the analysis ↗The Data Behind Shrink-Swell Soils and Foundation Failure
Expansive soils cost U.S. homeowners over $15 billion a year in foundation damage - and the shrink-swell risk is already mapped in SSURGO for nearly every parcel.
Read the analysis ↗How Organic Matter Loss Is Priced Into Farmland Without Anyone Knowing
Soil organic matter predicts long-term farm productivity, yet its slow loss is priced into land values without anyone naming the soil number behind it.
Read the analysis ↗Soil Data Is the Cheapest Form of Geotechnical Intelligence
A Phase I environmental site assessment costs thousands of dollars. A SSURGO query costs nothing and runs in seconds - the cheapest geotechnical screen there is.
Read the analysis ↗Karst Country: Mapping Sinkhole Risk Before You Build
Karst geology underlies 20% of the United States and every square kilometer is marked in the soil survey. Sinkholes appear suddenly - the risk does not have to.
Read the analysis ↗Fragile Soils and the Infrastructure Debt Nobody Is Counting
Most road and utility budgets ignore fragile soils - an infrastructure debt hiding in plain sight across 2.3 million national map units.
Read the analysis ↗The Ground Beneath the Cloud
A soil map the country has had for decades quietly decides where the AI build-out can actually happen. GroundScore reads it.
Read the analysis ↗