In 2025, Soil Data Access requests nearly doubled from the year prior. In FY2023, SDA received 121 million requests — 4.6 million from CART alone. Web Soil Survey created 3.4 million Areas of Interest. These aren't just statistics. They're the measured impact of national soil data on every conservation decision in America.
Comparing metric counts from year to year requires context. Each metric type measures a different user action, at a different scale. SDA traffic is always higher than WSS because SDA's API is embedded in dozens of external applications and GIS tools — each of those generates many API requests per user action.
Monthly counts aggregated annually. SDA traffic reflects both direct user queries and all external applications embedding soil data into their workflows. The 2025 near-doubling reflects growing API adoption by conservation technology partners.
Source: wss_metric_query_results · query_frequency='M' summed by year · National (state='xnational').
Query any metric type, any year, any frequency. The wss_metric_query_results table stores all platform activity — API calls, WSS actions, downloads, AOI definitions, and what soil data users are actually viewing.
WSS usage peaks in March and October — driven by planting season soil assessments and fall conservation planning deadlines. The January and June dips reflect winter dormancy and summer field-season gaps. This heatmap shows the monthly pattern year over year.
Of FY2023's 121 million SDA requests, approximately 4.6 million came from CART — the Conservation Assessment Ranking Tool used by conservation planners to assess resource concerns and rank program applications. That's 1 in every 26 SDA queries serving a direct conservation planning decision.
wss_metric_query_results table via the public Soil Data Access API. CART request counts (FY2023 = 4.6M) are derived from the SDA BAFLOG audit log database, which filters on application="CART" in the SDA audit trail. These internal counts are not directly queryable via the public API but are published in the Soil Data Metrics article.
Soil Data Access has become infrastructure. In FY2023, it fielded 121 million queries. In 2025, requests nearly doubled again. What began as a specialized federal data service now flows into farm management software, conservation planning tools, university research pipelines, and state GIS systems across the country.
Source: wss_metric_query_results · query_frequency='M' · SDA_Usage · National · Summed by calendar year
Of FY2023's 121 million SDA queries, CART contributed 4.6 million — roughly one in every 26. That fraction powers the conservation planning tool used by field staff in every county to rank program applicants and justify resource investments on working lands.
Each square above represents one unit of SDA traffic. The gold square is CART. The other 25 represent every other application streaming soil data: ArcGIS extensions, state systems, universities, and commercial platforms.
SoilWeb Application Family · FY2023 Visits
Source: USDA Soil Data Metrics article · FY2023
Every year, without exception, WSS usage spikes in March and again in October. Spring planting drives the first wave. Fall conservation program enrollment deadlines drive the second. The chart below shows average monthly AOI creation across all years on record — the agricultural rhythm encoded in data.
Average monthly AOI count across all years · National · wss_ActivityCounts AOI
AOI centroid analysis shows peak WSS usage in areas with the population density of rural Nebraska — not metropolitan centers. The users asking soil questions are making real land management decisions on working lands. The chart below ranks states by total cumulative WSS AOI activity across all years on record.
Soil data requests don't cluster in cities — they trace working lands. The map below shows cumulative Web Soil Survey and SDA usage by state across all years on record. Select a metric to see where the demand is strongest.