These land suitability raster data (GeoTIFF format) indicates areas of potential suitability for 21 crop groups and their specific irrigation management systems and seasons in the Southern Gulf catchments of the Northern Territory and Queensland. 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 Southern Gulf Water Resource Assessment (SOGWRA). 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 and 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 SOGWRA published report ‘Soils and land suitability for the Southern Gulf catchments’. A technical report from the CSIRO Southern Gulf Water Resource Assessment to the Government of Australia. Companion datasets showing the reliability of these suitability data (showing areas of the catchments where there is greater or lesser confidence in the accuracy of the suitability data) are also supplied. The naming convention for these data is; ‘crop group’ underscore ‘major crop’ underscore ‘season code’ underscore ‘irrigation type code’ underscore ‘catchments code’ underscore ‘data type’ eg ‘CG7_CottonGrains_D_Fw_S_Suit’ is Cotton and grain crops grown in the dry season with furrow irrigation in the Southern Gulf catchments suitability data. The codes for season are; W – wet season; D – dry season; P – perennial. The codes for irrigation type are; S – overhead spray irrigation; T – trickle irrigation; Fd – flood irrigation; Fw – furrow irrigation; R – 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 (refer to the 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 SOGWRA eg flooding was investigated by the Earth observation remote sensing group in the surface water activity. The Southern Gulf Water Resource Assessment provides a comprehensive overview and integrated evaluation of the feasibility of aquaculture and agriculture development in the Southern Gulf catchments (NT and Qld) as well as the ecological, social and cultural (indigenous water values, rights and aspirations) impacts of development.
