STATSGO attribute information is organized, on an individual state basis, into a set of 15 tables that are linked to the vector georeferenced digital data. The tables are logically organized to contain related items. The Map Unit, Component, and Layer tables provide the relevant data items for most environmental modeling applications.

Processing the tabular data was found to be quite cumbersome within the constraints of the Arc/Info GIS software environment. The Perl programming language with its flexible approach to processing character strings was found to provide the ideal set of elements for building scripts to process the data tables.

The basic approach taken was to export the tabular attributes from the Info database in the GIS environment for processing with original Perl scripts developed specifically for our needs. The processed information was then reformatted for Info and transferred back to the GIS. Once in the GIS, the full range of standard operations on the data were available.

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