Acknowledgements

The original CALES project was developed in the mid-1980’s at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research Laboratory (CERL) in Champaign, Illinois. The driving forces behind this original CALES development were Lloyd Wright, former Director of Conservation and Ecosystem Assistance for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and Keith Young, former Soil Scientist and Soil Information Systems Specialist with the Soil Survey Division of NRCS. Lloyd developed the original LESA process and then moved to automate the land evaluation part of that process, resulting in the original CALES system. Keith envisioned the use of the soil survey databases in automating the land evaluation process and worked closely with the original CALES programmers to design the system and to ensure proper usage of the soil survey information.

I wish to acknowledge the original CERL programming work of Al Moy, who developed the original CALES system, and of Jim Danley, who later added many enhancements and redeveloped much of the system over several years. I also want to give a special thanks to Kim Majerus of CERL, who for many years administered the operation of the original CALES system. I am very grateful that Kim was able to go into the CERL archives and supply us with a copy of the original CALES source code and data files. This material was invaluable to us in the current CALES redevelopment. We used some of the original source subroutines with little modification in the new system.

For this redevelopment project for the CALES system, I want to again thank Lloyd Wright for coming out of retirement long enough to organize anew the farmland protection effort for NRCS, refocus attention on the land evaluation needs, and encourage funding for the project. My appreciation also goes to Cheryl Simmons of the NRCS Office of Farmland Protection and Community Planning for her efforts in providing oversight and guidance to our work. From the NRCS National Soil Survey Center, I am grateful for the support and guidance of Ray Sinclair, who provided the impetus and persistence to get this project moving as well as the main guidance during development, and Jim Culver, who provided the management authorization and support for our work. From the NRCS Information Technology Center, I am grateful to Terry Aho, who provided his knowledgeable insight and review during the planning and development process, and to Gary Spivak and Ken Harward, who assisted us in setting up CALES to run against the current NASIS database in Fort Collins. I also give a sincere thanks to those who have reviewed the CALES system during development and provided useful comments and suggestions.

At the Iowa State University Statistical Laboratory, I acknowledge the work of Marvin Beck, who did the software development for this version of CALES. It was an extensive effort to delve into the old CALES system of programs and data, to understand the inner workings, and then to develop the new CALES system, accessing a new soils database and creating a new user interface. I also acknowledge the contribution of Deborah Reed-Margetan, who provided the necessary knowledge and assistance in accessing the NASIS soils database. Her knowledge of the database structure and queries was invaluable. A thank you also goes to Sherri Martinez for creating the CALES User Manual. For my part, I provided analysis, guidance, and review during the CALES development process.

Harvey P. Terpstra
Statistical Laboratory
Iowa State University