Soil and landscape science

Our research is sustaining productivity and improving the condition of our soil resources.

• 9 November 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011

Overview

Soil is an essential yet fragile natural resource. Australian soils must be well managed in order to sustain productive capacity into the future, and to minimise adverse impacts on the ecosystem services that soils provide.

This program is enabling design and implementation of the most appropriate rural land-management practices, by improving our understanding of soil and landscape attributes and processes, and how these vary spatially.

Our research is motivated by the need to:

• meet the increasing demand for environmental accounting, including the specific need for improved national capacity in the observation and prediction of trends in the Australian landscape (e.g. soil-resource condition monitoring and carbon accounting).
• design agricultural management practices that maximise carbon capture and minimise net emissions of greenhouse gases. National Carbon Accounting and approaches to carbon-pollution reduction must be designed on the basis of sound scientific evidence.
• increase agricultural productivity and secure food supplies for the future. This means improved utilisation and management of soil, and the development of farming systems that use water and nutrients more efficiently.

Research in this program focuses on:

• measurement and prediction of the spatial distribution of land attributes from paddock to continental scales
• the cycling and transport of carbon and nutrients in the soil and the net emission of greenhouse gases from the soil to the atmosphere
• soil-plant-atmosphere processes (including fluxes of water, solutes and energy) at the farm scale
• integration of the above to predict landscape behaviour, assess land suitability for alternative uses, and design land-management strategies to reduce environmental degradation, and improve agricultural productivity.

This research program strives for deep understanding of soil processes and landscape attributes, plus an ability to apply our science to contemporary issues at scales ranging from within farm paddocks to the continent.

We deliver our science through the Water for a Healthy Country and the Sustainable Agriculture Flagships.

Read more about CSIRO Land and Water.