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    multi-disciplinary team

  • Tomorrow's Solutions

    Delivered Today

  • Nationwide Coverage

    of more than 5,000 projects

  • Australian Owned

    multi-disciplinary team

Martens and Associates undertook an extensive mapping exercise for the Sydney Catchment Authority to determine soil facets for the entire Sydney Catchment area.

Martens and Associates undertook an extensive mapping exercise for the Sydney Catchment Authority (SCA – now known as Water NSW) to determine soil facets for the entire Sydney Catchment area. The mapping exercise was commissioned to increase the resolution of the Development Assessment Model (DAM), a tool utilised by the SCA to assess development impacts, specifically from onsite wastewater disposal areas, on water courses within the catchment area.

The SCA area covers approximately 15,500 km2 and includes Warragamba, Avon, Woronora, Cordeaux, Cataract and Tallowa dams. The catchment area extends from Lithgow in the north, to Goulburn in central west, past Braidwood and almost to Cooma in the south and to the escarpment above Wollongong in the central east. The soil facets mapping exercise was conducted using ESRI Arc GIS spatial analyst tool.

Project scope included:

  • Review existing GIS data from SCA including digital elevation model (DEM), contour, drainage and aerial photograph data
  • Digitally re-interpret each individual parent soil landscape (300 soil landscapes in total) into their various ‘soil facets’
  • Apply discrete SCA name and ID codes to facets so they could be linked to their parent soil landscape
  • Ground truth the mapping exercise via an extensive vehicle survey and GPS plotting
  • Assess the accuracy of mapping via statistical review of ground truthing data
  • Prepare report for SCA to guide soil facet data inclusion into the DAM
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