Land suitability for Custard Apple for the FGARA project

Land suitability for Custard Apple for the FGARA project

This land suitability for Custard Apple raster data (in GeoTIFF format) represents areas of potential suitability for this crop and its specific irrigation management systems in the Flinders and Gilbert catchments of North Queensland. The data is coded 1-5: 1 - Suitable with no limitations; 2 - Suitable with minor limitations; 3 - Suitable with... more moderate limitations; 4 - Marginal; 5 - Unsuitable. The land suitability evaluation methods used to produce this data are a modification of methods of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO). This data is part of the Flinders and Gilbert Agricultural Resource Assessment (FGARA) project and is designed to support sustainable regional development in Australia being of importance to Australian Governments and agricultural industries. The project identifies new opportunities for irrigation development in these remote areas by providing improved soil and land evaluation data to identify opportunities and promote detailed investigation. A companion dataset exists, “Confidence of suitability data for the FGARA project”. A link to this dataset can be found in the “related materials” section of this metadata record. less

Agricultural Land Management ;  Agricultural Land Planning ;  Agricultural Spatial Analysis and Modelling

https://doi.org/10.4225/08/53041911A3276

01 Sep 2013

FGARA ;  Custard Apple ;  AGRICULTURE-Crops ;  AGRICULTURE-Irrigation ;  Australia ;  INDUSTRY-Primary ;  LAND-Use ;  Queensland ;  SOIL ;  Flinders catchment ;  Gilbert catchment ;  land suitability

These suitability raster data for Custard Apple and its individual irrigation management systems have been created from a range of inputs and processing steps. Below is an overview. For more information refer to the CSIRO FGARA published reports and in particular: Bartley R, Thomas MF, Clifford D, Phillip S, Brough D, Harms D, Willis R, Gregory L, Glover M, Moodie K, Sugars M, Eyre L, Smith DJ, Hicks W and Petheram C (2013) Land suitability: technical methods. A technical report to the Australian Government for the Flinders and Gilbert Agricultural Resource Assessment (FGARA) project, CSIRO. Broadly, the steps were to: 1. Collate existing data (data related to: climate, topography, soils, natural resources, remotely sensed etc of various formats; reports, spatial vector, spatial raster etc). 2. Select additional soil and attribute site data by Latin hypercube statistical sampling method applied across the covariate space. 3. Carry out fieldwork to collect additional soil and attribute data and understand geomorphology and landscapes. 4. Build models from selected input data and covariate data using predictive learning via rule ensembles in the RuleFit3 software. 5. Create Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) key attributes output data. DSM is the creation and population of a geo-referenced database, generated using field and laboratory observations, coupled with environmental data through quantitative relationships. It applies pedometrics - the use of mathematical and statistical models that combine information from soil observations with information contained in correlated environmental variables, remote sensing images and some geophysical measurements. 6. Choose land management options and create suitability rules for DSM attributes. 7. Run suitability rules to produce limitation datasets using a modification on the FAO methods. 8. Create final suitability data for all land management options. Two companion datasets exist for this dataset. The first is linked to in the “related materials” section of this metadata record, entitled “Confidence of suitability data for the FGARA project”. The second (held by CSIRO Land and Water) includes expert opinion and knowledge about landscape processes or conditions that will influence agricultural development potential in these catchments, but were not captured sufficiently in the modelling process (and areas of expert opinion where the Mahanabolis method underestimates confidence). The two landscape features that require special attention are the basalt rock outcrops in the Upper Flinders catchment that were not well captured by the covariate data, and the secondary salinisation hazard in the central Flinders catchment. For more information refer to the report “Land suitability: technical methods. A technical report to the Australian Government for the Flinders and Gilbert Agricultural Resource Assessment (FGARA) project”.

This work was prepared for the Office of Northern Australia in the Australian Government Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development under the North Queensland Irrigated Agriculture Strategy <http://www.regional.gov.au/regional/ona/nqis.aspx>. The Strategy is a collaborative initiative between the Office of Northern Australia, the Queensland Government and CSIRO. One part of the Strategy is the Flinders and Gilbert Agricultural Resource Assessment, which was led by CSIRO. Important aspects of the Assessment were undertaken by the Queensland Government and TropWATER (James Cook University).

CSIRO Data Licence

CSIRO (Australia), Office of Northern Australia (Australia), Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines (Australia), Queensland Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts (DSITIA) (Australia)

Bartley, Rebecca; Thomas, Mark; Clifford, David; Philip, Seonaid; Brough, Dan; Harms, Ben; Willis, Reanna; Gregory, Linda; Glover, Mark; Moodie, Keith; Sugars, Mark; Eyre, Lauren; Smith, Doug; Hicks, Warren; Petheram, Cuan (2013): Land suitability for Custard Apple for the FGARA project. v2. CSIRO. Data Collection. https://doi.org/10.4225/08/53041911A3276

All Rights (including copyright) CSIRO Australia 2013.

The metadata and files (if any) are available to the public.