CSIRO Soils Archive

Linda Karssies|2 November 2016

CSIRO LAND AND WATER

The Australian National Soil Archive

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Archived soil specimens are invaluable “time capsules” for assessing change in soil

properties over time, particularly as new analytical tools become available.

They also allow Australia-wide studies without the need for travel.

So how do we manage them?

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Archiving soil samples so they can be found

from stored (inaccessible) to archived (accessible )

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Our two main goals are:

• To conserve the long term scientific value of soil specimens and soil data

• To make available the soil specimens and their data available for public research, both now and in the future

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At the National Soil Archive

We archive soil data & soil

material,manage submissions & user requests

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• The standard for collection field information and soil profiles is laid down in the ‘Yellow Book’.

• Standard laboratory methods are described in the Green Book.

We have set a minimum data requirements for archived samples:1. Detailed location information is essential (GPS info these

days), maps in the past), 2. some measured properties, 3. and the methods that were used this analysis.

New results (from users) are added to the database

Practical archive information is stored: in which drawer can the samples be found and how much material do we hold

How do we describe the samples and what information is captured?

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Archiving soil dataArchiving soil data

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Every soil sample is assigned a unique barcode which is a concatenation of the six highlighted variables in this case 899B-MA32114

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Our ‘product:Soil material plus information’

775 gram Whole SoilAgency: CSIRO Division of Soils (NSW)Project: CANSite: CP159Layer: 1Soil depth: 0.15-0.30 m Spec_ID: 29989Compactus address: 18A04Subsampled: 09/2013

Linkages

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Samples are organised by Site, and Sites are grouped by Project. In the Project table information about publications may be found -if it was made available at the time

Archive samples all lab results and lab method information

Entity Relation Diagram in Microsoft Access

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• An extensive database called NatSoil of 90,000 soil samples from 12,000 sites

• Samples sites locations and site reports can be downloaded online form Australian Soil Resource Information System (ASRIS)

How people find out about our samples

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Locations and reports also in the Ipad app ”Soilmapp”

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Managing user requestsUser and submission requests forms are available on our website

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How are the soil samples re-used?• For the calibration of new instruments

• For national soil diffuse reflectance libraries, to characterise soil composition and diversity

• For overview studies on 1) carbon sequestering potential

2) toxicity of Boron 3) sodic soils

• For development - an early version of ASRIS was based on NatSoil

• For measuring changes in soil properties over time

• For a study by Australian Federal Police - forensics

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How we could soil archive users benefit from an IGSN?

When users of the soil samples currently refer to samples from our collection in their journal articles, they currently mention the Site_ID and soil depth, as part of the National Australian Soil Archive collection. When others after them see that study and want to use those same soil samples, they contact us and list the Site_ID’s and soil depth and we look in our database if more soil material is available for them.

With an International Geo Sample Number, users would more easily be able to find out what work has been carried out on the samples of their interest. Into the future, as the number of samples that has been used several times grows, this could be valuable. This benefit would likely take many years to come to fruition.

Thank youLinda Karssies, Archivistt +61 2 6246 5824e linda.karssies@csiro.auwww.clw.csiro.au/aclep/archive

CSIRO LAND AND WATER