Soil toposequences and use of terrain analysis to predict soil distributions – an example from the Little River Catchment NSW
1NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources, Centre for Natural Resources Cowra, PO Box 445, Cowra, NSW 2794, Australia. Email Brian.W.Murphy@dipnr.nsw.gov.au
2CSIRO Land and Water, GPO Box 1666, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. Email john.gallant@csiro.au
3Formerly NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources.
The prediction of soil types and soil properties using terrain analysis is a developing field of soil science, especially with the increasing data requirements for natural resource modelling and assessment. In this paper, a series of soil toposequences within specified soil landscape units were examined and compared to the landform elements identified using terrain analysis (MRVBF [multi-resolution valley bottom flatness] and FLAG methodology). An assessment was made about the accuracy with which the terrain analysis could predict soil types and soil properties within soil landscape units and the potential usefulness of the methodology for natural resource modelling.
References
Murphy BW and Lawrie JW (1999) Soil Landscapes of the Dubbo 1:250 000 Sheet. NSW Department of Land and Water Conservation Service, Sydney.
Roberts DW, Dowling IT and Walker J (1997) A fuzzy landscape analysis GIS method for dryland salinity assessment. CSIRO Land and Water Technical Report No 8/97, July 1997.
Summerell GK, Vaze J, Tuteja NK Grayson, RB and Dowling TI (2003) An objective terrain analysis based method for delineating the major landforms of catchments. Proceedings MODSIM Conference, Townsville, Australia.
Taylor C (unpublished) Soil Landscapes of the Narromine 1:250 000 Sheet. NSW Department of Land and Water Conservation Service, Sydney.
Murphy B, Geeves G, Miller M, Summerell G, Southwell P, and Rankin, M (2003) The application of pedotransfer functions with existing soil maps to predict soil hydraulic properties for catchment-scale hydrologic and salinity modelling. Proceedings MODSIM Conference, Townsville, Australia 2003.
