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Soil and Landscape Grid National Soil Attribute Maps - Soil Colour (3" resolution) - Release 1

We used Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) technologies combined with collations of observed soil colour data from TERN's Soil Data Federation System, to produce surface and subsoil maps of soil colour at a 90&nbsp;m resolution.<br><br>


The map gives an estimate of the spatial distribution of RGB soil colour across Australia.<br><br>


Detailed information about the Soil and Landscape Grid of Australia can be found at - <a href=" https://esoil.io/TERNLandscapes/Public/Pages/SLGA/index.html ">SLGA</a>.<br><br>


<ul style="list-style-type: disc;">

<li>Period (temporal coverage; approximately): 1950-2020;</li>

<li>Spatial resolution: 3 arc seconds (approx 90&nbsp;m);</li>

<li>Number of pixels with coverage per layer: 2007M (49200 * 40800);</li>

<li>Data license : Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY);</li>

<li>Target data standard: GlobalSoilMap specifications;</li>

<li>Format: Cloud Optimised GeoTIFF;</li></ul>

Simple

Identification info

Date (Creation)
2020-10-13
Date (Publication)
2022-10-31
Date (Revision)
2025-12-10
Edition
1.0

Identifier

Title
DataCite
Code
doi:10.25919/h5g4-qm95
Codespace
http://dx.doi.org

Publisher

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Author

CSIRO Agriculture and Food - Malone, Brendan ()
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia

Collaborator

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
147 Underwood Avenue, Floreat, 6014, Western Australia, Australia
Floreat
Western Australia
6014
Australia

Collaborator

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
80 Meiers Road, Indooroopilly, Queensland, 4068, Australia
Indooroopilly
Queensland
4068
Australia

Collaborator

University of Sydney
City Road, Camperdown, New South Wales, 2050, Australia
Camperdown
New South Wales
2050
Australia

Collaborator

Geoscience Australia
101 Jerrabomberra Avenue, Symonston, 2609, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Symonston
Australian Capital Territory
2609
Australia

Collaborator

Department of Land Resource Management (2012-2016), Northern Territory Government
25 Chung Wah Terrace, Palmerston, Northern Territory, 0830, Australia
Palmerston
Northern Territory
0830
Australia

Collaborator

Office of Environment and Heritage (2011-2019), New South Wales
4 Parramatta Square, 12 Darcy Street, Parramatta, 2150, New South Wales, Australia
Parramatta
New South Wales
2150
Australia

Collaborator

Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts (2012-2015), Queensland Government
400 George Street, Brisbane, Queensland, 4000, Australia
Brisbane
Queensland
4000
Australia

Collaborator

Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources (2012-2018), South Australian Government
81-95 Waymouth Street, Adelaide, South Australia, 5000, Australia
Adelaide
South Australia
5000
Australia

Collaborator

Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment, Tasmanian Government
59 Liverpool Street, Hobart, Tasmania, 7000, Australia
Hobart
Tasmania
7000
Australia

Collaborator

Department of Environment and Primary Industries (2013-2015), Victorian Government
8 Nicholson Street, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia
Melbourne
Victoria
3000
Australia

Collaborator

Department of Agriculture and Food (2006-2017), Western Australian Government
3 Baron-Hay Court South Perth Western Australia 6151, Australia
South Perth
Western Australia
6151
Australia
Website
https://www.tern.org.au/

Purpose
The map gives a modelled estimate of the spatial distribution of soil colour across Australia.
Credit
We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Credit
<p></p>This work was jointly funded by CSIRO, Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) and the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).<br> We are grateful to the custodians of the soil site data in each state and territory for providing access to the soil site data, and all of the organisations listed as collaborating agencies for their significant contributions to the project and its outcomes.
Status
Completed

Point of contact

CSIRO Agriculture and Food - Malone, Brendan ()
Waite Road, Waite, South Australia, 5064, Australia
Waite Road
Waite
South Australia
5064
Australia

Spatial resolution

Spatial resolution
90
Topic category
  • Environment
  • Geoscientific information

Extent

N
S
E
W


Temporal extent

Time period
1950-01-01 2020-10-13
Maintenance and update frequency
Not planned
GCMD Science Keywords
  • SOILS
  • AGRICULTURE
  • LAND SURFACE
ANZSRC Fields of Research
  • Agricultural land management
  • Agricultural spatial analysis and modelling
  • Soil sciences
  • Pedology and pedometrics
TERN Parameter Vocabulary
  • wet soil colour
  • Unitless
QUDT Units of Measure
  • Unitless
GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
  • 30 meters - < 100 meters
GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
  • Decadal
Keywords (Discipline)
  • Soil
  • Raster
  • Australian Soil Colour
  • DSM
  • Global Soil Map
  • Spatial modelling
  • Soil Maps
  • Digital Soil Mapping
  • SLGA

Resource constraints

Use limitation
The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows others to copy, distribute, display, and create derivative works provided that they credit the original source and any other nominated parties. Details are provided at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
File name
88x31.png
File description
CCBy Logo from creativecommons.org
File type
png
Linkage
https://w3id.org/tern/static/cc-by/88x31.png

Title
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
Alternate title
CC-BY
Edition
4.0
Website
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints
TERN services are provided on an "as-is" and "as available" basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure. <br />Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN. <br /><br />Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting
Other constraints
Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.

Resource constraints

Classification
Unclassified

Distribution Information

Distribution format

Distributor

Distributor

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
80 Meiers Road, Indooroopilly, Queensland, 4068, Australia
Indooroopilly
Queensland
4068
Australia
OnLine resource
Cloud Optimised GeoTIFFs - Soil Colour

OnLine resource
slga_soilcolour

National Soil Attribute Maps - Soil Colour

OnLine resource
Landscape Data Visualiser - Soil Colour

OnLine resource
ro-crate-metadata.json

Resource lineage

Statement
The map was produced as per methods described at - https://aussoilsdsm.esoil.io/slga-version-2-products/soil-colour<br><br> Soil colour is arguably one of the most obvious and easily observed soil morphological characteristics. Soil scientists use soil colour to differentiate genetic soil horizons as well as for the classification of soil types, e.g. The Australian Soil Classification.<br><br> In Australia, prior work of mapping the colour of Australian soils was performed by Viscarra Rossel et al. (2010), but was limited to just surface soils, output mapping to 5&nbsp;km spatial resolution, and only utilised a relatively small collection of vis-NIR spectra (from which colour was inferred) to develop spatial soil colour models.<br><br> From data discovery via the Australian Soil Data Federator, we were able to compile over 300 000 soil colour field observations (dry soil condition) collected across Australia. About 160 000 were for topsoils, while about 140 000 were for subsoils. Rather than exclusively using vis-NIR spectra, a logical line of investigation is to exploit the availability of a comparatively larger field observed dataset.<br><br> Colour Space Conversions<br><br> Field classification of soil colours are near exclusively recorded using the Munsell HVC (Hue, Value, Chroma) colour system. Munsell HVC soil colour descriptions are not conducive for quantitative studies (Robertson 1977). Using a lookup table, we performed a conversion from the Munsell HVC colour space to the CIELAB colour space. The CIELAB colour space can describe any uniform colour space by the three variables: L*, a*, and b*. Each variable represents the lightness of the colour (L* = 0 yields black and L* = 100 indicates diffuse white), its position between red/magenta and green (a*, negative values indicate green while positive values indicate magenta) and its position between yellow and blue (b*, negative values indicate blue and positive values indicate yellow).<br><br> Digital soil mapping<br><br> Random Forest machine learning was used to independently model L*, a*, and b* target variables as a function of a suite of available national extent environmental covariates. While we did investigate various options for combined target variable modelling given the covarying relationships of the colour variables, neither were able to match the prediction skill of the independently treated approach. The L* variable was modelled as a categorical variable, both a*, and b* were modelled as continuous variables. For both top- and subsoil models, a dataset (n=10000) was selected out of each of the available datasets prior to any modelling for the sole purpose of evaluating the goodness of fit of the fitted models, akin to an out-of-bag model evaluation.<br><br> After modelling, the combined L*, a*, and b* were post-processed to line up the nearest HVC colour space chip using Euclidean distance quantification.<br><br> For colour visualisation of the soil colour maps, predictions were transformed to the RGB colour space using the same lookup table as for the conversion form Munsell HVC to CIELAB.<br><br> All processing for the generation of these products was undertaken using the R programming language. R Core Team (2020).<br><br> Code - https://github.com/AusSoilsDSM/SLGA Observation data - https://esoil.io/TERNLandscapes/Public/Pages/SoilDataFederator/SoilDataFederator.html Covariate rasters - https://esoil.io/TERNLandscapes/Public/Pages/SLGA/GetData-COGSDataStore.html
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Title
Methods Summary - Soil-Colour
Website
https://aussoilsdsm.esoil.io/slga-version-2-products/soil-colour

Method documentation

Title
R Core Team (2020). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
Website
https://www.R-project.org/

Method documentation

Title
Robertson, A. R., The CIE 1976 color-difference formulae, Color Research and Application, 1977, 2: 7–11.
Website
https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1520-6378.1977.tb00104.x

Method documentation

Title
Viscarra Rossel, R. A., Behrens, T., Ben-Dor, E., Brown, D. J., Demattê, J. A. M., Shepherd, K. D., Shi, Z., Stenberg, B., Stevens, A., Adamchuk, V., Aïchi, H., Barthès, B. G., Bartholomeus, H. M., Bayer, A. D., Bernoux, M., Böttcher, K., Brodský, L., Du, C. W., Chappell, A., … Ji, W. (2016). A global spectral library to characterize the world’s soil. Earth-Science Reviews, 155, 198–230.
Website
https://doi.org/10.1016/J.EARSCIREV.2016.01.012

Method documentation

Reference System Information

Reference system identifier
EPSG/EPSG:4326

Reference system type
Geodetic Geographic 2D

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/1d9a9989-142e-4785-8122-711f95f20871

Title
TERN GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Point of contact

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Type of resource

Resource scope
Dataset
Metadata linkage
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/1d9a9989-142e-4785-8122-711f95f20871

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Date info (Creation)
2021-08-10T00:00:00.000000+00:00
Date info (Revision)
2025-12-10T09:45:45.445709+00:00

Metadata standard

Title
ISO 19115-1:2014/AMD 1:2018 Geographic information - Metadata - Fundamentals
Edition
1

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19115-3:2016
Edition
1.0

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19157-2:2016
Edition
1.0
Title
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-3:2016 and ISO 19157-2:2016
Date (published)
2021
Edition
1.0

Identifier

Code
10.5281/zenodo.5652221
Website
https://github.com/ternaustralia/TERN-ISO19115/releases/tag/v1.0

 
 

Overviews

thumbnail

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

ANZSRC Fields of Research
Agricultural land management Agricultural spatial analysis and modelling Pedology and pedometrics Soil sciences
GCMD Science Keywords
AGRICULTURE LAND SURFACE SOILS

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Associated resources

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