Soil and Landscape Grid of Australia (SOLAGRID)

The Soil and Landscape Grid of Australia provides access to high-resolution soil and landscape attributes.

The soil attribute products consist of (1) nation-wide soil attribute maps which were generated by combining (2) Australia-wide 3D soil attribute maps with (3) regional maps for parts of Australia. The generation of these datasets is largely based on statistical modeling combining actual soil observations, spectroscopic measurements  with topographical, climatic, geological and other co-variates. Available modeled soil attributes include soil depth, bulk density, coarse fragments, textural composition, available waterholding capacity, and various fertility indicators (organic carbon, pH, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, effective cation exchange capacity). Soil attribute values are estimated at 6 defined depth intervals (0-5cm, 5-15cm, 15-30cm, 30-60cm, 60-100cm and 100-200cm) and are accompanied by an estimate of the reliability of the predictions for each pixel in the grid. These reliability estimates are in the form of a lower 5% confidence interval map and an upper 95% confidence interval map.

The landscape attribute products were derived from DEM-S, the smoothed version of the national 1 arc-second resolution Digital Elevation Model, which was derived from the 1 arc-second resolution Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data. The landscape attribute products include besides elevation, slope and aspect, indices representing local landform relief and shape (e.g. curvature), topographic position (e.g. Topographic Wetness Index) and topography-corrected solar radiation data.

All soil and landscape attribute products are available in GeoTIFF raster format at 3 arc-second (90 m) spatial resolution. GIS software, commercial or public-access, is therefore needed for data visualization and further processing or combination with other spatial datasets.