Join NPSOT-Williamson County on Thursday, November 12, 2026, when our featured topic will be “The Soils of Central Texas” with Nathaniel Woodward. Free and open to the public. The meeting begins at 7:00 PM. The guest presentation begins after a short business meeting.
About our topic: This talk will briefly cover the fundamentals of soil science before launching into a discussion of the varieties of soils in Central Texas, their physical and chemical composition, their unique features, and their distribution. Nathaniel will touch briefly on the history of soil mapping efforts, USDA-NRCS soil series, SSURGO data, and block diagrams. A few case-studies will be presented of native plants that show up preferentially on specific soil types. During his presentation, Nathaniel will provide an interactive application for visualizing soils that is publicly accessible via a URL, and he plans to make his slides publicly available via a URL from which he will present.
About our speaker: Nathaniel Woodward is a Data Scientist at Indeed.com and a former professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Sciences at UT Austin. He is also an amateur naturalist, hobby farmer, and shepherd to a small flock of Shetland sheep. His interest in soils took hold while researching where to buy the best farmland in Central Texas. Though he has no formal training in pedology, he is passionate about the subject and has devoted long hours to evaluating every soil type within a two-hour radius of Austin. Nathaniel is currently serving as a Director at Large in the NPSOT-Wilco Chapter, where he has helped organize invasive plant removals. He and his wife Lindsay have been chapter members for several years now, though they have recently been attending chapter meetings via Zoom while caring for young baby Florence at home.
==> This month’s in-person location is the Georgetown Public Library, 2nd floor, 402 West 8th St, Georgetown, TX 78626. Come early (6:30 PM) for expert advice, to check out the seed swap board, or just to visit.
==> To attend via Zoom, register at https://npsot-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/NgCMZMJjQqu8zSs9DDxI-A#/registration
At every meeting, we give away a book — about native plants or the meeting topic — to one randomly chosen in-person attendee!
If we have permission from our guest speaker, we record the meeting for our YouTube channel. (If we’re not going to record, it will be noted in the above announcement.) We publish a blog post when the video is available for viewing. See a list of past topics at this link.
Have an idea for a speaker? Let Program Leader Susie Hickman know via email to wilco-chapter@npsot.org.
NPSOT-Williamson County meetings are free and open to the public. We hope you attend! Meetings may be in person, virtual, or both, so be sure to check details in the meeting announcement. Meetings are announced on our website and Facebook. See upcoming topics on our Home page or on the Calendar.