Dynamic Soil Properties Web Application

Dynamic soil properties (DSP) are defined by soil survey as soil properties that change with land use and management over decades. DSPs include soil physical and chemical properties that are used as indicators of soil health. Over the last decade, several projects have collected DSPs and the collected dataset is large and analysis and interpretation is difficult., We have developed a shiny app to aid quick exploration and interpretation of the collected DSP dataset. The DSP shiny app is a web-based application that can explore the data associated with DSP projects generated from the lab. The dataset collected from the Kellogg Soil Survey Laboratory (KSSL) includes 96 variables and more than 50,000 observations. We first apply data cleaning and present the information using simple box and whisker plots as the default. The visualization allows the plot of each DSP site (study name), single dynamic soil property (variable), and four groupings of condition, soil type, layer sequence, and crop. Additionally, sample locations were added to a map the ESRI map with the options fo rESRI street, ESRI Topo, ESRI Imagery, Open Street Map, Stamen Terrain, or Stamen TonerLite and an option to display soil polygons. In conclusion, the DSP shiny app is deployed as a web app andutilizes the imported DSP dataset. This app will allow easy visualization of the dataset exported from KSSL soil data access (SDA). The app also allowed users to visualize the distribution and spread of datapoint for each DSP variable. The DSP App can be improved with exploratory analysis for soil and site comparisons using additional statistical tests and visualizations such as principal component analysis and heatmap analysis.