Abstract
Acid sulfate soils can form when pyrite-rich marshes are drained or tidal influence decreases, naturally or anthropogenically. Often they are vegetated by mangroves, serve as important aquatic bird habitats, and harbor unique microbial biodiversity. They limit coastal development potential. The current best map of Australian acid sulfate soils is based on expert interpretation of soil surveys, most at 1:100,000 scale. In the current study, we attempted the first predictive spatial modeling to map acid sulfate soils and soil sulfur concentration on a 90-m grid. We use 34 national environmental 90-m grids and 614 observations on the presence/absence of acid sulfate soils to train a machine learning algorithm, random forests, to predict the location of acid sulfate soils across three regions of Northern Australia. We use the same environmental data and 1315 measurements of total elemental sulfur at 60–80 cm depth across Australia to train another random forest model to predict the spatial pattern of sulfur concentrations in the three regions. The model for acid sulfate soils is better than that for sulfur but both related maps showed that high sulfur concentrations generally coincide with the predicted presence of acid sulfate soils. This coincidence between the predicted occurrence of acid sulfate soils and sulfur concentrations confirms the modeling approach presented here was reliable and could be applied to map acid sulfate soils at high resolution globally.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abdu N, Abdullahi AA, Abdulkadir A (2017) Heavy metals and soil microbes. Environ Chem Lett 15:65–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-016-0587-x
Ball M (1998) Mangrove species richness in relation to salinity and waterlogging: a case study along the Adelaide River floodplain, northern Australia. Glob Ecol Biogeogr Lett 7:73–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-8238.1998.00282.x
Boyd CE, Tucker CS (1998) Pond aquaculture water quality management. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston
Breiman L (2001) Random forests. Mach Learn 45:5–32. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1010933404324
de Caritat P, Cooper M (2011) National Geochemical Survey of Australia: The Geochemical Atlas of Australia. Geoscience Australia, Record 2011/20 (2 Volumes). Canberra, Geoscience Australia
Dent D, Pons L (1995) A world perspective on acid sulphate soils. Geoderma 67:263–276. https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-7061(95)00013-E
Fältmarsch RM, Åström ME, Vuori KM (2008) Environmental risks of metals mobilised from acid sulphate soils in Finland: a literature review. Boreal Environ Res 13:444–456
Fanning DS (2002) Acid sulfate soils. In: Lal R (ed) Encyclopedia of soil science. Marcel Dekker, New York, pp 11–13
Fanning D, Rabenhorst M, Fitzpatrick R (2017) Historical developments in the understanding of acid sulfate soils. Geoderma 308:191–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2017.07.006
Fitzpatrick RW, Fritsch E, Self PG (1996) Interpretation of soil features produced by ancient and modern processes in degraded landscapes: V. Development of saline sulfidic features in non-tidal seepage areas. Geoderma 69:1–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-7061(95)00046-1
Fitzpatrick RW, Powell B, Marvanek S (2008) Atlas of Australian acid sulfate soils. In: Fitzpatrick R, Shand P (eds) Inland acid sulfate soil systems across Australia. CRC LEME Open File Report No. 249, Perth, WA, pp 75–89
Gallant JC, Austin JM (2015) Derivation of terrain covariates for digital soil mapping in Australia. Soil Res 53:895–906. https://doi.org/10.1071/sr14271
Gomes NC, Cleary DF, Calado R, Costa R (2011) Mangrove bacterial richness. Commun Integr Biol 4:419–423. https://doi.org/10.4161/cib.4.4.15253
Gosavi K, Sammut J, Gifford S, Jankowski J (2004) Macroalgal biomonitors of trace metal contamination in acid sulfate soil aquaculture ponds. Sci Total Environ 324:25–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2003.11.002
Hall KC, Baldwin DS, Rees GN, Richardson AJ (2006) Distribution of inland wetlands with sulfidic sediments in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. Sci Total Environ 370:235–244. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2006.07.019
Hengl T, Heuvelink GB, Kempen B, Leenaars JG, Walsh MG, Shepherd KD, Sila A, MacMillan RA, de Jesus JM, Tamene L, Tondoh JE (2015) Mapping soil properties of Africa at 250 m resolution: random forests significantly improve current predictions. PLoS ONE 10(6):e0125814. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125814
Islam AKMS, Edwards DG, Asher CJ (1980) pH optima for crop growth. Plant Soil 54:339–357. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02181830
Lauber CL, Hamady M, Knight R, Fierer N (2009) Pyrosequencing-based assessment of soil pH as a predictor of soil bacterial community structure at the continental scale. Appl Environ Microbiol 75:5111–5120. https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.00335-09
Ling Y-C, Bush R, Grice K, Tulipani S, Berwick L, Moreau JW (2015) Distribution of iron- and sulfate-reducing bacteria across a coastal acid sulfate soil (CASS) environment: implications for passive bioremediation by tidal inundation. Front Microbiol 6:624. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2015.00624
Lynch B, Cuff N, Green C (2012) Summary of the origin and derivation of the 1:250,000 land system descriptions for the northern part of the Northern Territory, DRAFT. Land Resource Assessment Unit, Department of Land Resource Management, Palmerston, Northern Territory
Mahmood N, Saikat SQ (1995) On acid sulfate soils of the coastal aquaculture ponds of Bangladesh. Pak J Mar Sci 4:39–43
Minty B, Franklin R, Milligan P, Richardson M, Wilford J (2009) The radiometric map of Australia. Explor Geophys 40:325–333. https://doi.org/10.1071/eg09025
Odgers NP, Sun W, McBratney AB, Minasny B, Clifford D (2014) Disaggregating and harmonising soil map units through resampled classification trees. Geoderma 214:91–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2013.09.024
Queensland Government (2016) State Planning Policy 1/00. Planning and management of coastal development involving acid sulfate soils. Brisbane, Qld, Australia. http://www.dilgp.qld.gov.au/planning/state-planning-instruments/queensland-planning-provisions.html. Accessed 5 Sept 2017
Viscarra Rossel RA (2011) Fine-resolution multiscale mapping of clay minerals in Australian soils measured with near infrared spectra. JGR Earth Surf. https://doi.org/10.1029/2011jf001977
Viscarra Rossel RA, Webster R, Bui EN, Baldock JA (2014) Baseline map of organic carbon in Australian soil to support national carbon accounting and monitoring under climate change. Glob Change Biol 20:2953–2970. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12569
Wilford J (2012) A weathering intensity index for the Australian continent using airborne gamma-ray spectrometry and digital terrain analysis. Geoderma 183:124–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2010.12.022
Wright MN, Ziegler A (2017) Ranger: a fast implementation of random forests for high dimensional data in C++ and R. J Stat Softw 77:1–17. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v077.i01
Acknowledgements
This work was part of the Northern Australia Water Resource Assessment, funded through the Australian Government’s Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper, the government’s plan for stronger farmers and a stronger economy. I thank Jason Hill, NT Department of Land Resource Management, and Mark Glover, CSIRO Land and Water, for providing acid sulfate soils locations; Ross Searle and Seonaid Philip, CSIRO Land and Water, for computational support; Ian Watson, CSIRO Agriculture and Food, and Mark Thomas, CSIRO Land and Water, for their comments on the draft.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bui, E.N. High-resolution mapping of acid sulfate soils in Northern Australia through predictive models. Environ Chem Lett 16, 1449–1455 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-018-0753-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-018-0753-4