New York Agricultural Soil Classifications for Renewable Energy Siting

Mineral Soil Groups 1-4 classifications are used to determine agricultural mitigation payments for solar projects under NYSERDA's procurement programs. The dataset was created by converting the New York State Agricultural Land Classification master list to a tabular form with unique identifiers for linking to the NRCS SSURGO database. It was published by data.ny.gov and last updated in July 2025.

Use Cases

• Calculate potential agricultural mitigation payments by joining on `MUKEY` and filtering by `Default Mineral Soil Group` values 1-4.
• Assess soil suitability for agricultural retention using columns like `Capability Class (FM5 CAP)`, `Soil Name`, and `Corn Yield (ton/acre)`.
• Perform geographic analysis of soil productivity by joining spatial data using the `County` and `MAPSYM` columns.
• Identify soil characteristics impacting project design via features such as `Drainage`, `Soil Slope`, and `Flooding`.

Strengths

• Links to authoritative external databases via unique `MUKEY` identifiers for spatial joins.
• Contains over 20 specific soil attributes including productivity metrics like `Hay Yield (ton/acre)` and `Index (TDN)`.

Limitations

• Dataset is static for the 2022 procurement and will not be updated, potentially missing newer soil surveys.
• Sample data and total row count are unavailable, preventing assessment of dataset completeness.

Provenance

Source

New York State Agricultural Land Classification master list maintained by the Department of Agriculture and Markets (AGM).

Collection Method

Converted from a master list to a tabular form with identifiers for linking to the NRCS SSURGO database.

Time Range

2022

Freshness

Data is from 2022 and was last updated in the catalog in July 2025, but the underlying sources are updated yearly.

Geography

New York State, United States.