Land suitability data of the Fitzroy catchment WA generated by the Northern Australia Water Resource Assessment

These land suitability raster data (in GeoTIFF format) indicates areas of potential suitability for 126 crops and their specific irrigation management systems and seasons in the Fitzroy catchment of Western Australia. This data provides improved land evaluation information to identify opportunities and promote detailed investigation for a range of sustainable development options and was created within the ‘Land suitability’ activity of the Northern Australia Water Resource Assessment (NAWRA). There are five land suitability classes coded 1-5. 1 – Highly suitable land with negligible limitations 2 – Suitable land with minor limitations 3 – Moderately suitable land with considerable limitations 4 – Currently unsuitable land with severe limitations 5 – Unsuitable land with extreme limitations. The land suitability evaluation methods used to produce this data are a modification of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) land evaluation approach. The land suitability analysis is described in full in the CSIRO NAWRA published report referenced in the "Citation" field of this metadata record. A companion dataset showing the reliability of this suitability data (showing areas of the catchment where there is greater or lesser confidence in the accuracy of the suitability data) is also supplied. The naming convention for these data is; ‘crop’ underscore ‘season’ underscore ‘irrigation type’ underscore ‘catchment code’ underscore ‘data type’ eg ‘SorgForage_dry_fur_F_Suit’ is Sorghum forage dry season furrow irrigated Fitzroy catchment suitability. The codes for season are; wet – wet season; dry – dry season; per – perennial; wet-dry – planted late wet season and grown through the dry season eg navy bean, soybean; wet-long – longer growing crops that grow through a wet season eg sugarcane. The codes for irrigation type are; spray – overhead spray irrigation; tric – trickle irrigation; mini-spray – mini spray irrigation; flood – flood irrigation; fur – furrow irrigation; rainfed – rainfed. The codes for data type are; suit – suitability data, CI – reliability data expressed as confusion index.
It is important to emphasize that this is a regional-scale assessment: further data collection and detailed soil physical, chemical and nutrient analyses would be required to plan development at a scheme, enterprise or property scale. Several limitations that may have a bearing on land suitability were out of scope and not assessed as part of this activity (see section 1.1 and 2.1.2 of the cited report), these limitations include biophysical and socio-cultural. For example these land suitability raster datasets do not include consideration of the licensing of water, flood risk, contiguous land, risk of irrigation induced secondary salinity, or land tenure and other legislative controls. Some of these may be addressed elsewhere in NAWRA eg flooding was investigated within the Earth observation remote sensing activity and the risk of irrigation induced secondary salinity was assessed as part of the groundwater investigations.