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Soil maps of NSW

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Since the mid 1980s there have been three major streams of soil mapping activity in NSW - the Soil and Land Resources Series, the Soil Landscape Series, and Land Systems Mapping. These three aim to evaluate the nature and condition of the State's soil resources and thereby fulfil a requirement of the NSW Soil Conservation Act 1938.

Soil and Land Resources Series

This is the new State-wide standard for soil mapping. It combines both previously published and new areas and is based on CMA boundaries or areas of State significance. Future publications will be based on targeted regions of the State where soil and land information is vital for land use planning and infrastructure development.

Soil Landscape Series

This program consisted of two major components:

• 1:250,000 scale for broad-acre agriculture, mainly in the wheat-sheep belt
• 1:100,000 scale for areas under intense land use pressure or change, such as coastal and urban/peri-urban areas and regions of intensive cropping.

Colleciton of soil landscape information under the program ceased in 2005 and the last of 39 paired soil landscape maps and reports (for the Liverpool Plains portion of the Baan Baa 1:100,000 sheet and for the Cootamundra 1:250,000 sheet) were published in 2010.

Land Systems Mapping

This broadscale mapping of the Western Division of NSW was carried out in the mid 1980s, to delineate areas or groups of areas with recurring patterns of topography, soils and vegetation. The maps and associated report cover the entire Division at 1:250,000 scale, and are available as digital map data plus an associated report.

Digital soil maps

Digital soil map data is available in ESRI shapefile format from the OEH data download site.