Soils - High intensity soil mapping of sugarcane growing areas between Babinda and Miriwinni in the lower Russell River Catchment, North Queensland - RUSS

Sugarcane farms the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland have been identified as a significant source of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), linked with deleterious impacts on the Great Barrier Reef. While the industry best practice, 'SIX EASY STEPS', recommends fertiliser applications be based on soil attributes, adoption has been hampered by a lack of suitability scaled soil information. Production of conventional production of reliable, high intensity soil survey is both time consuming and expensive. This 2000 ha pilot in the Babinda Swamp, trialled a hybrid mapping approach, using Electromagnetic Induction (EMI), combined with conventional soil survey. The project aimed to develop a streamlined, and consistent approach for producing reliable, high intensity soil information to support practice change in catchments experiencing high DIN losses. Electromagnetic induction (EMI) data was collected cross the project area, cleaned, normalised, and processed into a single EMI mosaic dataset. Unique mapping areas (UMA) were developed based on the EMI mosaic, Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and air photos. These UMA's were investigated using conventional soil survey techniques to identify corresponding soil types and other agronomically important chemical, physical and landscape attributes.This project was funded by the federal government though the Reef Foundation and was jointly delivered by the Department of Resources’ soils team and Jaragun Ecoservices. Outputs include the high intensity, 1: 10,000 scale polygonal soil mapping with accompanying soil attribute layers: Soil Organic Carbon category, N Leaching potential category, N Denitrification potential category, P Sorption category, Cation Exchange Category, pH category, Al Saturation category, Ca Deficiency category, Surface Texture category, Subsoil Wetness category to 0.5m, Subsoil Wetness category to 1.0m and Flooding category.This dataset should be considered along the associated report which contains workflows and processes designed to help others emulate the process to deliver EMI based soil mapping with consistent processes and outputs.