NRCS Million Acre Mapper Awards

The NRCS USDA for many years has had an award to recognize soil scientists who dedicated much of their lives to mapping soils and making soil survey reports for our country. In many cases, these men and women worked very hard and invested a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears into this calling.  And a calling it indeed is. Being a soil scientist mapping with the NRCS, or other agencies in the USA that adhere to National Cooperative Soil Survey Standards like the USFS, is indeed much more than a job and much more than even a career, it's a calling. It's a job that the people who do it identify with. They're not just working as a soil scientist, they ARE a soil scientist. It becomes who they are and it's a very big part of their identity. In my opinion, it's one of the best jobs in the world if working out of doors is important to you. Often working alone for years in isolated, lonely places in the middle of nowhere, it takes a special person to want to be so solita