Coastal Acid Sulfate Soil Condition 2008 monitoring baseline

Coastal acid sulfate soils contain pyrite and when oxidised through exhumation or drainage can release sulfuric acid. Fourty sites were selected in high acid sulfate risk, low elevation environments (Naylor et. al, 1998), ensuring representative terrain elements, land uses and land managment regimes and undisturbed sites were sampled. At each site five soils were sampled at 0-10, 50-60, 100-110 and 150-160cm and tested for standard national acid sulfate soil analytes (Ahern, 2004). Depth weighted realised acidification risk was used to rank the condition class for each site. Results are reported by averaging the classes within each soil monitoring unit. Because it is important to maintain the representativeness of the permanent monitoring sites, the data is only available under conditional data licence agreement.