California Storie Index Scores for Sonoma County, USA

The Storie Index is a widely known and accepted method of rating soils for land use and productivity in California. This soil-based land classification system has been used in California for over 50 years. Storie ratings can be found in published soil surveys throughout California,. The latest version of the Storie Index was published in 1978. Traditionally, Storie Index ratings have been hand generated by soil survey staff and collaborators,. These ratings can be highly subjective, because no single person has generated Storie ratings for the entire state, and because of the inherent biases associated with the design of the classification system. O'Geen et al. (2008) have developed a revised version of the Storie Index that generates ratings digitally from the USDA NRCS National Soil Information System (NASIS). This revised Storie Index is generated from a wide range of soil profile and landscape characterisitics similar to those used in Storie (1978).