Land Judging for Farms and Homesites
How to Determine the Land Capability Class

In most cases, the land capability class is determined by the most severe limitation. For example, suppose your site has the following factors: medium texture, deep soil, none to slight erosion, slow permeability, well-drained, rapid runoff, steep slope, and no flood hazard. What would be its land capability class? First, it has three limiting factors - slow permeability, rapid runoff, and steep slope. According to the following table, the best class would be II for permeability, Class III for rapid runoff, and Class VI for steep slope. Now, because land capability class is determined by the most severe limitation (in this case, steep slope), the land capability class is Class VI.

Sometimes there are exceptions to the example given, and a combination of limiting factors will drop the land capability class one class more than any one factor alone. Two exceptions are:

1. Severe erosion drops the class one level more. Severe erosion by itself on Class I or II land will be Class III. Severely-eroded Class III land will drop to Class IV, severely-eroded Class IV land drops to Class VI land, and severely-eroded Class VI land drops to Class VII land. Class V and VII land are not dropped one class more for severe erosion.
2. Very slow permeability combined with Class III poorly-drained soils lowers the land class to IV.

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