Soil rockiness DSM data of the Roper catchment NT generated by the Roper River Water Resource Assessment

Soil rockiness is one of 18 attributes of soils chosen to underpin the land suitability assessment of the Roper River Water Resource Assessment (ROWRA) through the digital soil mapping process (DSM). Soil rockiness represents areas that are excluded from agricultural production due to the abundance and size of rock outcrop, surface coarse fragments, profile coarse fragments and hard segregations. This raster data represents a modelled dataset of a set of rules applied to the above features for the top 0.10m of soil and is derived from field measured site data and environmental covariates. Data values are: 0 Not rocky, 1 Rocky. Descriptions of the rules defining rockiness are supplied with this data. Rockiness is a parameter used in land suitability assessments as restrictions relate to the intensity of rock picking required in land preparation, root crop harvesting, reduces crop growth and use of agricultural machinery particularly in the plough zone. This raster data provides improved soil information used to underpin and identify opportunities and promote detailed investigation for a range of sustainable regional development options and was created within the ‘Land Suitability’ activity of the CSIRO ROWRA. A companion dataset and statistics reflecting reliability of this data are also provided and can be found described in the lineage section of this metadata record. Processing information is supplied in ranger R scripts and attributes were modelled using a Random Forest approach. The DSM process is described in the CSIRO ROWRA published report ‘Soils and land suitability for the Roper catchment, Northern Territory’. A technical report from the CSIRO Roper River Water Resource Assessment to the Government of Australia. The Roper River Water Resource Assessment provides a comprehensive overview and integrated evaluation of the feasibility of aquaculture and agriculture development in the Roper catchment NT as well as the ecological, social and cultural (indigenous water values, rights and aspirations) impacts of development.