Conservation Education

Conservation Education helps us recognize and acknowledge our country's natural resources. Most importantly, it helps us learn how to conserve those resources for future generations. Natural resource education encompasses soil, water, wildlife, plant life, and other natural features of our world. Conservation education enables us to understand how natural resources and ecosystems work together and how to best use our resources wisely.

The District supports conservation education for youth and adults through annual events as well as information shared on social media and on this website. We invite you to review the varied topics available here to help you make even better informed decisions for use of our natural resources.

Soil Health/Soil Quality

Healthy soil is the basis for productive crops and scenic forestlands. It leads to productive grazing lands and diverse wildlife habitats.

Soil performs five essential functions: 1) regulating water, 2) sustaining plant and animal life, 3) filtering and buffering potential pollutants, 4) cycling nutrients, and 5) physical stability and support. The NRCS provides a comprehensive site detailing the importance of soil health.

Bastrop County Soil Surveys

Soil surveys provide the public with comprehensive information about soils across the U.S. Developed specifically for each county in the nation, the soil survey is produced by the National Cooperative Soil Survey, which is operated by the USDA NRCS.

Originally produced as paper-based soil survey books, the soil survey is now provided via the Web Soil Survey (WSS). The WSS, maintained as the single authoritative source of soil survey information, allows one to create custom reports by selecting their specific area of interest. The archived soil survey books are still available for review as PDFs, however the WSS is the official, current soil information repository.

Soil surveys are for general land use. Soil quality assessments and certain conservation and engineering applications may require onsite investigation and testing.

Consult the soil survey resources below to learn more about soil in your location.

Water

A historic publication provided by the Texas Water Development Board entitled Ground-Water Resources of Bastrop County, Texas, provides a detailed look at the formations that yield our ground water.