• Comprehensive information
• Who uses ASRIS?
• Partners
• Video

Australia's soils are one of the country's most valuable natural assets, critical to sustainable food production, biodiversity conservation, water quality and human health.

Australian soils are geologically old and infertile, and face considerable degradation risks related to processes such as soil carbon decline, acidification and erosion.

CSIRO aims to ensure that Australian soils maintain their productive capacity well into the future by providing nationally consistent soil and land information that enables improved land management decisions.

The Australian Soil Resource Information System (ASRIS) is an integrated set of soil databases including site specific, local, regional and national data. ASRIS includes a web visualisation tool that gives public online access to the best available soil and land information in a consistent form across the county.

'Good information on soil and land resources generates many economic and environmental benefits,' says Dr Neil McKenzie, Chief of CSIRO Land and Water.

'ASRIS helps to reduce risks in decision making at the local, regional and national level,' says Dr McKenzie.

Comprehensive information

ASRIS contains a set of databases that provide soil and land information in a nationally consistent and useable form.

Commonly required soil data and information is displayed through an online system using maps, photographs, satellite images, tables and graphs.

Users can zoom into a location of interest, turn data sets on and off, produce customised maps and print the results.

ASRIS adopts standards for online geographic information so it is compatible with many of the rapidly expanding data resources available via the Internet.

ASRIS uses a seven level mapping hierarchy. The upper levels provide general descriptions of Australia’s landforms, regolith and soil types.

The lower levels provide detailed soil mapping and data in regions where field survey and mapping has been undertaken.

ASRIS provides data on important soil attributes, including for example:

• acidity (pH)
• soil carbon
• available water storage
• salinity
• erodibility.

ASRIS also includes a soil profile database NatSoil, with fully characterised sites that are representative of significant environments. Many of the related soil specimens are maintained for future research in the CSIRO National Soil Archive..

ASRIS is updated as new soil data and information and ancillary datasets become available.

Who uses ASRIS?

ASRIS is particularly useful for large regional, multi-jurisdiction, national and international assessments.

The ASRIS mapping website is regularly used by:

• natural resource managers
• agricultural industry advisors
• planners
• government agencies
• research and educational institutions
• community groups.

Partners

ASRIS is being further developed and maintained by CSIRO for its partners in the Australian Collaborative Land Evaluation Program (ACLEP).

ACLEP is a partnership between:

• CSIRO
• Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
• state and territory agencies responsible for land resource assessment
• GeoScience Australia
• soil research and industry groups.

Video

Visit the ASRIS website.