An Excel spreadsheet containing a macro for calculating the USDA soil texture class. The macro can be used as a cell function, allowing you to automatically calculate the texture class from a series of cells with percentages of soil separates.
An Excel spreadsheet containing a macro for calculating the USDA soil texture class. The macro can be used as a cell function, allowing you to automatically calculate the texture class from a series of cells with percentages of soil separates.
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Hi Bradley. Wow, this is what I’m looking for! Thanks for this post. The texture is a critical soil characteristic. So, I would appreciate a technique that can determine the USDA soil textural subclass names. Interestingly, the macro can function as a cell function for an automatic calculation of the texture class. I believe that macro has several advantages over the manual method. Besides faster calculation, it is not prone to errors. But does it also perform a quantitative key execution to the textural subclasses?
Hi Gilmore. Glad to hear you have found this Excel macro useful. Yes, this macro does utilize the five sand fraction categories to add the sand modifier to expand the 12 soil texture classes to 21 total sub-classes. The cell formula actually expects to receive eight values (C, T, S, VFS, FS, MS, CS, and VCS). Understanding that not everyone has all the data needed to calculate textural sub-classes, this macro can calculate the standard 12 soil texture classes with just percentages for clay (C), silt (T), and sand (S). In which case, the user would either enter ‘0’ for the very fine sand (VFS), fine sand (FS), medium sand (MS), coarse sand (CS), and very coarse sand (VCS) values, or have those point to cells with no content. The example table in the Excel file shows cells designated for sand fractions, but because those cells are blank, the soil texture class is calculated based on C, T, and S.