For State and Territory Governments

Our soil

Soil is one of our most valuable natural resource assets. It plays a crucial role in supporting agricultural industries. Soil also supports our biodiversity and environment, our infrastructure, our heritage, and the way we live.

The National Soil Strategy

The National Soil Strategy sets out how Australia will value, manage and improve its soil for the next 20 years. The Australian National Soil Information System (ANSIS) is supported by funding through the Australian Government National Soil Strategy (Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) in collaboration with CSIRO and partner organisations.

ANSIS vision

The Australian National Soil Information System (ANSIS) will provide improved access to soil data and information to help sustainably manage our soil.

What ANSIS can do for you

ANSIS will improve online access and use of shared, nationally consistent soil data and information. It will federate soil data from systems across Australia, connecting multiple data sources, including those from governments, research and natural resource management organisations, industry, farmers, and the community. ANSIS will make soil data and information available via a web portal.

Collaboration to deliver ANSIS

As custodians of soil data, State and Territory Governments are key collaborators, contributors and users of ANSIS.
States and Territories may contribute in a number of ways, including:

• Developing updated and improved soil information systems
• Developing enhanced soil data collection and management capacity
• Providing FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) soil site and analytical data via new web services
• Increasing government soil data access and use via ANSIS
• Scoping options for a nationally applicable and customisable soil field data entry application
• Scoping potential for a national unique soil feature identifier scheme
• Developing assessments for system requirements for non-government data participation in ANSIS.

State and Territory Value Add

Direct benefits to the States and Territories include:

• Improved capacity of State and Territory agencies to access and use soil data from various sources through ANSIS
• Increased capacity and skills within jurisdictions to support soil data management and exchange
• Integration of soil data within ANSIS collations supporting improved regional and national assessments
• Capacity to deliver web services that allow data sharing to enable the development of tools and applications that can inform decision making by end users.

With State and Territory Governments participating as key data providers to ANSIS, benefits are expected through improved availability, access and use of nationally consistent soil data and information. ANSIS will achieve this through an innovative, technology based, national soil information infrastructure.