CSIRO National Soil Site Database

Brief description

The CSIRO National Soil Site database (Natsoil) currently contains descriptions of over 21, 000 soil site investigations. The data includes morphological descriptions, chemical, physical and mineralogical properties and spectral predictions, along with soil specimen management data. The database and The Australian National Soil Archive provide the foundation for the development of a national soil spectral library and also support TERN Landscapes national soil property modelling through a federated collation of available soil databases.

Data is managed within the SQLServer environment, and made available via a Microsoft Access snapshot on request, which is assigned a new DOI.

The database schema is based on the SITES V2 national standard. See supporting file.

Lineage

Current holdings reflect soil data collected since 1948. While the database was originally comprised solely of data related to research projects and field stations that CSIRO managed, it now also includes sites from other national collaborative projects (e.g. The Northern Australia Water resource Assessment NAWRA). Where state and territory agencies and other organisations have submitted specimens to the Australian National Soil Archive (ANSA), the associated site and analytical data is maintained here also. Data curation is an ongoing activity to support research projects and for the ANSA. As new projects contribute their data and specimens, so the database is expanding.