Collaboration delivers new sandy soils map

| Posted Dec 08,2023

If you read our ‘Enabling soil data’ story last month, you’ll know about Dr Nathan Robinson’s Soil CRC project that is helping to uncover available soil data and improve data management. Dr Robinson and the project team from Federation University, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research and Charles Sturt University have been working with other Soil CRC researchers to better manage data for our projects and develop solutions for improved sharing and reuse of national soils data.

The team have joined forces with Dr Richard Bell from Murdoch University to ensure the data from his sandy soils project is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (otherwise known as FAIR). Thanks to this collaboration, Dr Bell’s sandy soil map dataset now has a new home in our Visualising Australasia’s Soils (VAS) portal, making it the first Soil CRC online dataset that is also findable via Research Data Australia.

Dr Robinson said the new sandy soils map of Australia’s agricultural lands was produced by collating soil and landscape data from Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales, and combining it with the latest digital soil mapping products for Australia. A staged map compilation process was undertaken to combine all these available datasets into one uniform map that retains integrity of legacy contextual mapping information.

“From the new sandy soils map we were able to identify agricultural areas of sandy soils in Western Australia (10.611 Mha), South Australia (2.479 Mha), New South Wales (1.867 Mha), Victoria (0.864 Mha) and Tasmania (0.215 Mha),” Dr Robinson explained. “That equates to 16.036 Mha of sandy soil identified nationally, which is considerably higher than the 11 Mha from previous estimates.”

“The sandy soils dataset was a test case for the Soil CRC, ensuring we could link these records via a virtual catalogue pilot. The dataset was first uploaded to Federation University’s FigShare research data portal, then made accessible via Soil CRC’s VAS portal,” Dr Robinson said.

Leader of the VAS project, Professor Peter Dahlhaus (also from Federation University), said the sandy soil data sharing provides a use case in soil data management and best practice, and sets a precedent for others to follow.

“It’s fantastic to be able to visualise and access this data, thanks to the collaborative effort of the researchers and technical experts involved in the Soil CRC and its partners,” Professor Dahlhaus said.

With the sandy soil map dataset now available on both VAS and FigShare, researchers, advisors and farmers will be able to access the data to inform their decision making.

This research effort is improving the visibility of the research data coming out of the Soil CRC, so that researchers, farmer groups, growers and advisors will be able to reliably access, share and reuse the data into the future.