Soil and land resources refer to a delineable area of the Earth's terrestrial surface, including all attributes of the biosphere immediately above or below this surface, and are critical for sustainable development, ecosystem health and food security.
Intensive land uses may cause greater degradation risk to soil and land resources
We provide a range of soil and land resource services such as soil sampling and testing, soil mapping, strategic cropping land and agricultural land classification assessments, land use and land capability studies, and regulatory compliance.
Strategic Cropping Land
Our staff carried out a strategic cropping land (SCL) assessment over 2,600 ha of land across a coal seam gas project area in western Queensland, Australia.
We completed a review of cropping history based on high-resolution satellite imagery and GIS analysis of ground slope to identify over 500 ha of land that was likely to be excluded as potential SCL, resulting possible $2.9M saving in mitigation fees should the proposed resource activity be identified as having a permanent impact on SCL.
Land Capability Post-Mining
Our staff completed a land capability study to support mine closure planning and regulatory approvals for a gold-copper mine in southeast Asia.
We carried out a review of pre-, current- and post-mining environments, relevant legislation and land use options in context of local stakeholder engagement outcomes for mine closure and decommissioning. We derived land units for post-mining landscape and land use and assessed these against the land capability classes for each land capability determinant. This information together with LIDAR data and GIS processing allowed us to map the land use capabilities across the mine site.