Visualising Australasia’s Soils: building a legacy

The Visualising Australasia’s Soils (VAS) project commenced in 2019 to provide Soil CRC participants, and the agricultural industry more broadly, with access to data, information and knowledge on Australasian soils.

Phase 1 (2019-2021) of the project delivered an online soil data portal that aggregates considerable volumes of disparate, well described soil data, sourced from project partners who share their data according to the rules they set.

Phase 2 (2021-2024) continues to add greater functionality to the VAS portal, including a self-serve data management system, improved filtering and reporting, seamless interoperability with the Australian National Soil Information System (ANSIS) and the inclusion of soil sensor data.

This final phase (Phase 3) aims to transform VAS into an enduring component of an Australasian soils knowledge system that is self-sustaining and inherently useful for research and education.

Phase 3 will harness artificial intelligence to add value to soil performance data, and enhance the reporting of soil quality, function and target values for high performance soils.

The key objectives of VAS are to motivate soil data custodians to make their data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR), and align with other national and international soil research data initiatives to maximise discovery and reuse.