Associate Professor Peter Dahlhaus
Project Leader
Federation University
The Visualising Australasia’s Soils (VAS) project aims to provide Soil CRC participants with access to considerable volumes of reliable quality soil data. It will be sourced from a federation of soil data custodians who share their data according to the rules they set, therefore maintaining control.
The first phase of the project has produced a working internet portal that supports the 16 farmer group participants in their data needs. The second phase of the project will focus on providing tangible benefits to the project participants, especially the farming groups in the Soil CRC. The ultimate goal is to co-create an enduring component of an Australasian soils knowledge system that is self-sustaining and inherently useful for research and education, and ultimately, farmer decision making.
Access to the data will benefit Soil CRC research and industry partners by ensuring that all research builds on the best available and most current data sets. The continued participation of the farming groups from the first project phase, and the inclusion of new ones, is evidence of the project need, with all the farmer group partners in the Soil CRC now included.
