1. Presentation by Ross Searle and Mike Grundy
representing the TERN Soils Facility
The Need for Effective Soil
Information Infrastructure

2. TERN Soils Collaborations
Soils facility is highly collaborative
•State agencies
•Universities
•Geoscience Australia
•CSIRO
•TERN Facilities

3. The Australian Soil & Landscape Grid
Infrastructure to move from ‘soil information’ to
soil spatio-temporal systems:
Soil information which:
• is consistent, reliable, functional and
comprehensive
• is at an appropriate scale and resolution
• describes soil variability in x,y,z (i.e. the soil
volume)
• integrates with earth observation, climate
biogeochemical models and monitoring
systems
• Improves the quality of ecosystem research
• Reduces uncertainty in models, integrated
systems and land management decisions
Current soil information does not meet this need
– it does not provide the right kind of
‘infrastructure’

4. Why?
I assume you assume that Australia - a 1st world
country has 1st world soil information
no
what would 1st world info allow?
• provide soil information you need:
• what you want, where you want it and with the
quality you need
what we have:
• a patchwork / collage and little of what you need

6. Benefits of the New Infrastructure
•ASRIS has highlighted the need
•Poor or inadequate infrastructure ensures
duplication and inefficiency – example later
•Discourages emergent activities
•Readily updateable
•Is explicit and transparent about quality

7. Topographic parameters
(available now)
•Slope, aspect, curvature
•Relief
•Slope/relief classification
•MrVBF valley bottom flatness index
•Topographic position index
•Topographic wetness index (TWI or CTI)
•Solar radiation
John Gallant

8. Specifications – Soil properties
Six Depths Key soil properties
0 - 5 cm 1. Organic Carbon (g/kg)
5 – 15 cm 2. Sand (g/kg), Silt (g/kg), Clay (g/kg)
15 – 30 cm coarse fragments (g/kg)
3. pH
30 – 60 cm 4. Depth to restricting layer (cm)
5. Depth of regolith (cm)
6. Total P (%)
60-100 cm 7. Bulk Density (Mg/m3)
8. Available Water Capacity (given in mm/m)
100-200 cm 9. ECEC (Cations plus exchangeable acidity mmol/kg)
Depth to bedrock 10. EC (Electrical conductivity mS/m)
and From these attributes, ecosystem model parameters
Effective depth will be predicted using an embedded inference
system
Slide Credit: Alfred Hartemink

9. Building on Existing Soils Data
Environmental Correlation
Raphael Viscarra-Rossel

10. Building on Existing Soils Data
Spatial Disaggregation
Nathan Odgers

11. David Clifford

12. Get - - http://www.asris.csiro.au/viewer/tern
Viewhttps://data/csiro/dap
Discover - http://portal.tern.org.au
Peter Wilson & David Jacquier

13. The Need For a Soil Infrastructure...

14. The need for a Soil
Infrastructure...

16. One off solution
Had to develop a purpose
built soils framework
Manual interpretation of soil
parameters
Manual development of
parameter files
Little provenance
No estimate of reliability

17. Extrapolation Supersites - We know a lot about small areas
Supersites Other facilities – we know a little about a
large area eg TERN Soils, AusCover
By combining we can move toward sophisticated
national environmental accounting
National accounting
TERN Soils
AusCover

18. Key Contacts For Soils Facility
• the info - Peter Wilson
• the science – Raphael Viscarra Rossel, Ross Searle
• the program – Mike Grundy
the team
David Clifford Linda Gregory
Melisa Dobbie Nathan Odgers
David Jacquier Karen Holmes
John Gallant Liz Stower
Jen Austin John Wilford
Mark Thomas Jason Morris