What kind of soil does virginia have

Soil surveys are important to planners, engineers, zoning commissions, tax commissioners, homeowners, developers, as well as agricultural producers. This information, vital for making wise land use decisions, is now readily available online for all residents to use through the Web Soil Survey. Natural Resources Conservation Service Virginia.

Stay Connected. Loading Tree Soils Soil Health Soil Surveys. For example, a common soil type in Fairfax County is 39B. The number represents the soil type - 39 identifies the soil type as Glenelg silt loam. The letter represents the landscape slope class - B indicates slopes of percent. Fairfax County offers descriptions and ratings for soil types that can help you learn more about your soil and its suitability for septic drainfields, infiltration trenches, foundation support and more.

See pp. Looking for soil information from outside Fairfax County? If you need assistance obtaining soils information or interpreting the soil maps, descriptions or ratings, please call the conservation district at , TTY or email us requesting soils information. Marine clay is a type of soil found in Fairfax County that contains clays that swell upon wetting and shrink upon drying.

Potential problems associated with these soils include land slippage and slope instability, shrinking and swelling of clays, poor foundation support, and poor drainage. In Fairfax County, marine clays occur in widespread areas east of Interstate Read more about the problems associated with marine clay. Naturally occurring asbestos fibers in Northern Virginia. Most greenstone asbestos fibers are locked up within the bedrock or are potentially found within the very deep subsoil.

Living on such soils is not considered a hazard because asbestos fibers are sequestered far underground. However, during major construction, excavations may be deep enough to disturb the deep subsoil or the bedrock itself. Construction is not prohibited in such areas, but proper precautions should be taken. Read more about construction safety in areas of greenstone bedrock.

If you are interested in testing the fertility of the soil in your lawn or garden, you can send a soil sample to Virginia Tech where it will be analyzed for a small fee. The dense smectite clay is also nearly impermeable to water. During heavy rains, groundwater backs up on top of the clay, saturating the sandier soil layers above it.

At a certain point, these sandy layers can become a muddy slurry and cause a landslide. A decade ago, a nearly two acre chunk of land slid off a Marine Clay hillside next to Telegraph Road during a particularly wet spring.

Docile, predictable, accommodating; Glenelg has few problems to note. Glenelg weathers from micaceous schist bedrock, the same million year old metamorphic stone that the Potomac crashes over at Great Falls.

This rock type occurs in a wide swath that runs from Great Falls in the northeast to Clifton in the southwest. Glenelg has fairly thin topsoil over a rusty red band of clay — often several feet thick — that starts just a few inches below the surface.

Below the clay layer, the soil gets looser as the clay content decreases with depth. Shiny mica flakes weathered from the Schist bedrock can be found throughout Glenelg, but they increase with depth.

If you ever dig in Glenelg, your hands will look like they are covered in glitter. The mica flakes are loose, light and hard to compact. As a result, the deepest soil layers have an almost fluffy texture. Glenelg is well drained, has no shrinking-swelling clay, and has good bearing strength.

A house built on Glenelg is a happy house indeed. A good addition of organic matter or compost should fix most deficiencies. When it comes to soil, the rules of the US Department of Agriculture state that a soil must be named after the town where it was first discovered. That makes Fairfax silt loam our homeboy or girl! It was first described in and it remains local, mapped only in Fairfax and a few neighboring counties in Maryland and Virginia.

Fairfax looks almost exactly like Glenelg silt loam covered with a feet capping of marine sediments. That in and of itself is not so interesting — plenty of Fairfax County is covered with marine sediments — but Fairfax silt loam is often found on hilltops, including the highest hilltop we have: Tysons Corner about feet above sea level.