Territory Stories

Report on the Land Units of the Coastal Plains

Details:

Title

Report on the Land Units of the Coastal Plains

Other title

Soils of the coastal plains, Northern Territory, Australia.

Creator

Land Conservation Section

Collection

E-Publications; E-Books; PublicationNT

Date

1970

Location

Coastal Plains of the Northern Territory.; Soils report

Description

These reports describes the land resource mapping over the Northern Territory coastal plains region. The surveyed area was mapped at a scale of 1:50,000. The mapped land units are described using the dominate soils, topography and vegetation. The potential land use and limitations for each land unit are also briefly described.

Notes

There are three different reports attached to this record: Report on the land units of the coastal plains / K.J.Day; Soils of the coastal plains, Northern Territory, Australia / A.D.L. Hooper; and Soils report (coastal plains survey 1968,69,70 / K.J. Day

Language

English

Subject

Coastal ecology - Northern Territory; Land Unit mapping; Coastal Plains

Publisher name

Animal Industry and Agriculture Branch, Northern Territory Administration

Place of publication

Darwin, N. T.

Format

3 volumes, various pagings.

File type

application/pdf

Use

Copyright

Copyright owner

Animal Industry and Agriculture Branch, Northern Territory Administration

License

https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00042

Parent handle

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/257991

Citation address

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/506887

Related items

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/506884; https://hdl.handle.net/10070/506885

Page content

2. the soils. The results of this study indicated that the characteristic A1 - - C horizons of dark clay soils (Dudal 1963) although used in previous surveys (Stewart 1956, Hooper,unpublished data) are not applicable to a detailed. classification. Instead six main layers of deposition were defined based on morphology, mode of formation and salt content. A. The Depositional Layers (i) A - Alluvial dark clays forming the surface layer between 12 and 48 inches in depth. Colours range from greyish brown on well drained sites to very dark grey or black in swampy sites. Rusty staining is common on fragment faces or the surface 6 inches where the soils are being cultivated for , but elsewhere olive brown, brown or red mottles occur throughout the layer. Lime occurs in this layer in two forms: (a) as hard rounded concretions; or (b) irregular amorphous cells. Gypsum occurs as small dense cells of fine acicular crystals. Efflorescences of mainly gypsum and sodium chloride (Baseden and Martin 1965) also occur sporadically at the surface during the dry season. The sub types within this layer are identified as follows: Ab brown or greyish brown colours Ad black or very dark grey colours As self mulching granular surface Al lime (Caco3 ) present Ag gypsum (Caco4 ) present Aq quartz sand or iron nodules present Total soluble salt contents (calculated from EC x 10-3 on 1:5 suspensions) vary both in relation to underlying layers and in response to local drainage featues. Generally however total salts, chlorides and reaction indicate the characteristics of each of the layer sub types. Aq (mostly light clays) and Abq or Ab layers show the lowest total salt contents (not exceeding .09%) with chlorides at 0.03% and reaction (pH)