Soil Health and Stability Baselines for New South Wales Forest Catchments

A Forest Monitoring Steering Committee project produced baseline maps for soil condition indicators across New South Wales Regional Forest Agreement areas. The consortium between the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and the University of Sydney delivered empirical soil maps from 2162 units and digital soil modelling outputs. Maps describe baseline conditions, drivers, and trends of soil stability and health, incorporating machine learning techniques.

Use Cases

• Establishing baseline soil condition metrics based on digital soil modelling outputs.
• Analyzing trends and drivers of soil change based on climate and land disturbance maps.
• Comparing empirical soil profile data from the Soil and Land Information System (SALIS) with modelled predictions.
• Monitoring forest catchment health based on key indicators of soil stability.

Strengths

• Empirical soil maps are based on data from 2162 distinct spatial units.
• Digital soil modelling outputs relate known soil qualities to environmental data.
• Analysis includes the impact of specific drivers like Climate Change and Bushfires.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and the University of Sydney consortium.

Collection Method

Empirical data collection and digital soil modelling using machine learning techniques.

Freshness

Initial publication date is 10/05/2022.

Geography

Forest catchments across the NSW Regional Forest Agreement areas.