If you are looking to buy or sell land in Chatham County feel free to visit my Chatham County Land Sales page. At any time I have dozens of properties available in the area and list everything from commercial real estate to farms. If you are seeking a certain type of soil just give me a call.
Determining Soil Types
Sellers and buyers of land often want to know what type of soil is on their property, or on their potential property. They may just be curious or they may need this information for farm or engineering purposes. There are many ways to go about finding this information. To quickly get an idea of the soil types you can use the USDA’s Web Soil Survey information. The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provides information on soil found in land around 95% of the counties in the USA.
If you are on the land
If you are at the property you can use the SoilWeb app. This handy app is available on both the Google Play store and on iTunes for iOS users. This app uses your phone’s GPS location to tell you what kind of soil is underneath your feet. (Screenshots below)
- Get the app on Google Play
- Get the app on iTunes
If you are not near the land
A much more complicated way to discover what type of soil is on the land you are looking at is to use the Web Soil Survey’s web site provided by the USDA. To use this visit the USDA’s Web Soil Website. If you are having trouble using the site feel free to give me a call as I am very familiar with all aspects of the land in Chatham County.
Chatham County Soil Types
Here is a screenshot of the SoilWeb app in action. I took this screenshot this morning while walking some land that someone is getting ready to sell. When someone sells land I look at all aspects of the property, including the dirt.
This is a very typical soil type for the Chatham County, Pittsboro, Moncure area. As you can see the soil is 85% Herdon. Clicking on this information in the app takes you to a page which explains what the Herndon Series is, which is a deep, well drained, moderately permeable soil that formed in material mostly weathered from fine-grained metavolcanic rock of the Carolina State Belt. In this example 5% of the soil is Nanford. Soils of the Nanford series are deep, well drained solids found on uplands and formed in material weathered from argillite and other metavolcanic rocks on the Carolina Slate Belt.
More on the Carolina Slate Belt soon.
