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Soil and Landscape Grid National Soil Attribute Maps - Rock outcrop occurrence (3" resolution) - Release 1

The map gives a modelled estimate (probability) of the spatial distribution of rock outcroppings across Australia.<br></br>


This product was produced in the development of the updated soil thickness map of Australia, details of which are published in Malone and Searle (2020; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114579 ). This product is the output from Model 1 of aforementioned paper and uses the Rock Properties database provided by Geoscience Australia which gives the locations of sampled rock outcrops across Australia ( http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/disciplines/geophysics/rock-properties ). Filtering this dataset resulted in 14616 rock outcrop locations within areas where relief >300 m. A machine learning model was used to find relationships between observed data and associated environmental covariate data to inform the mapping of rock outcrop occurrence 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>Attribute Definition: Probability of rock outcrops;</li>

<li>Units: 0-1;</li>

<li>Period (temporal coverage; approximately): 1950-2021;</li>

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

<li>Total number of gridded maps for this attribute: 1;</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)
2019-09-01
Date (Publication)
2023-12-04
Date (Revision)
2025-12-10
Edition
1

Identifier

Title
DataCite
Code
doi:10.25919/82gq-pf38
Codespace
http://dx.doi.org

Publisher

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

Author

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - Malone, Brendan ()
147 Underwood Avenue, Floreat, 6014, Western Australia, Australia
Floreat
Western Australia
6014
Australia

Author

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - Searle, Ross (Senior Experimental Scientist)
147 Underwood Avenue, Floreat, 6014, Western Australia, Australia
Floreat
Western Australia
6014
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 (probability) of the spatial distribution of rock outcroppings across Australia.<br> The aim is to operate an open national capability that provides access to verified, science-quality land surface dynamics data and soils information layers, plus high-end data analytics tools that integrated with other TERN observations can meet the needs of ecosystem researchers and actionable information for policy makers and natural resource managers.<br>
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.<br>
Status
Completed

Point of contact

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - Malone, Brendan ()
147 Underwood Avenue, Floreat, 6014, Western Australia, Australia
147 Underwood Avenue
Floreat
Western Australia
6014
Australia

Spatial resolution

Spatial resolution
90
Topic category
  • Environment
  • Geoscientific information

Extent

Description
Australia
N
S
E
W


Temporal extent

Time period
1950-01-01 2020-01-01
Title
Malone, B., & Searle, R. (2020). Improvements to the Australian national soil thickness map using an integrated data mining approach. Geoderma, 377, 114579. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.GEODERMA.2020.114579
Website
Malone, B., & Searle, R. (2020). Improvements to the Australian national soil thickness map using an integrated data mining approach. Geoderma, 377, 114579. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.GEODERMA.2020.114579

Related documentation

Maintenance and update frequency
Not planned
GCMD Science Keywords
  • SOILS
  • ROCKS/MINERALS/CRYSTALS
ANZSRC Fields of Research
  • Agricultural land management
  • Agricultural spatial analysis and modelling
  • Soil sciences
  • Pedology and pedometrics
TERN Parameter Vocabulary
  • rock outcrop
  • Unitless
QUDT Units of Measure
  • Unitless
GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
  • 30 meters - < 100 meters
GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
  • Decadal
Keywords (Discipline)
  • TERN_Soils
  • TERN_Soils_DSM
  • Raster
  • Soil Thickness
  • Continental DSM
  • Global Soil Map
  • Spatial modelling
  • 3-dimensional soil mapping
  • Machine learning
  • Soil Maps
  • Digital Soil Mapping
  • SLGA
  • Rock
  • Geology

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 GeoTIFF - Rock Outcrop Occurrence, Release 1

OnLine resource
Landscape Data Visualiser - Rock Outcrop Occurrence, Release 1

OnLine resource
DES_rockoutcrop_N_P_AU_NAT_C_20190901

SLGA Rock Outcrop Occurrence, Release 1

OnLine resource
ro-crate-metadata.json

Distribution Information

Distribution format

Distributor

Distributor

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
147 Underwood Avenue, Floreat, 6014, Western Australia, Australia
Floreat
Western Australia
6014
Australia
OnLine resource
File Naming Conventions

Resource lineage

Statement
The modelling and mapping of rock outcrop occurrence was performed as part of efforts to update and improve modelling of soil thickness across the Australia. Following is the description of method and further details of this work.<br><br> Rather than fitting a single model of soil thicknesses we went for a nuanced approach which entailed three separate models for:<br><br> Model 1. Predicting the occurrence of rock outcrops.<br> Model 2. Predicting the thickness of soils within the 0-2&nbsp;m range<br> Model 3. Predicting the occurrence of deep soils (soils greater than 2&nbsp;m thick).<br> Models 1 and 3 used the categorical model variant of the Ranger RF which was preceded by distinguishing; for Model 1, the observations that were deemed as rock outcrops from soils. And for Model 3, distinguishing soils that were less than 2&nbsp;m thick (and not rock outcrops) from soils greater than 2&nbsp;m thick. Ultimately both Models 1 and 3 were binary categorical models. 50 repeats of 5-fold CV (cross-validation) iterations of the Ranger RF model were run for each Model variant.<br><br> Model 2 used the regression form of the random forest model. After removing from the total data set the observations that were regarded as rock outcrops and soil greater than 2&nbsp;m, there were 111,302 observations available. Of these, 67,698 had explicitly defined soil thickness values. The remaining 43,604 were right-censored data and were treated as follows. For each repeated 5-fold iteration, prior to splitting the data in calibration and validation datasets, values from a beta function were drawn at random of length 43,604. This value (between 0 and 1) was multiplied by the censored value soil thickness and then added to this same value, creating a simulated pseudo-soil thickness. Once the simulated data were combined with actual soil thickness data, the values were square-root transformed to approximate a normal distribution. Ranger RF modelling proceeded after optimising the Hyperparameter settings as described above for the categorical modelling. Like the categorical modelling, 50 repeated 5-fold CV iterations were computed.<br><br> All three model approaches were integrated via a simple ‘if-then’ pixel-based procedure. At each pixel, if Model 1 indicated the presence of rock outcrops 45 times or more out of 50 (90% of resampling iterations), the estimated soil thickness was estimated as rock outcrop, or effectively 0&nbsp;cm. Similarly, for Model 3 which was the model based on prediction of deep soils (soils >2&nbsp;m deep). In no situations did we encounter both Models 1 and 3 predict in the positive on 90% or more occasions simultaneously. If Model 1 or 3 did not predict in the positive in 90% of iterations, the prediction outputs of Model 2 were used.<br><br> After model integration, we derived a set of soil thickness exceedance probability mapping outputs. These were derived simply by assessing the empirical probabilities (at each pixel) and then tallying the number of occasions the estimated soil depth exceeded given threshold depths of 10&nbsp;cm, 50&nbsp;cm, 100&nbsp;cm, and 150&nbsp;cm. This tallied number was divided by 50 to give an exceedance probability for each threshold depth.<br><br> All processing for the generation of these products was undertaken using the R programming language (R Core Team, 2020).</li> <ul style="list-style-type: disc;"><li>Code - https://github.com/AusSoilsDSM/SLGA</li> <li>Observation data - https://esoil.io/TERNLandscapes/Public/Pages/SoilDataFederator/SoilDataFederator.html</li> <li>Covariate rasters - https://esoil.io/TERNLandscapes/Public/Pages/SLGA/GetData-COGSDataStore.html</li>
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Title
R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
Website
https://www.r-project.org/

Method documentation

Title
Methods Summary - Soil Thickness
Website
https://aussoilsdsm.esoil.io/slga-version-2-products/soil-thickness

Method documentation

Reference System Information

Reference system identifier
EPSG/EPSG:4326

Reference system type
Geodetic Geographic 2D

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/d38e88b7-96ff-4aba-ba24-f9ac2f66dbc2

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/d38e88b7-96ff-4aba-ba24-f9ac2f66dbc2

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Date info (Creation)
2024-09-02T00:00:00.000000+00:00
Date info (Revision)
2025-12-10T10:01:07.756474+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

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
ROCKS/MINERALS/CRYSTALS SOILS

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Associated resources

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