Utilizing on-the-Go Radiometric Mapping for the Investigation of Short-Term Pedogenic Processes in the Lower Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia.

Proximal soil sensing techniques have been used extensively in precision agriculture and digital soil mapping to map spatially variations of soil properties and to make inferences about soil quality in agricultural landscapes. Proximal soil sensing offers the advantage of surveying specific sites at a high resolution reasonably quickly at low costs and minimal landscape disturbance.

In recent years, on-the-go soil sensing instruments, i.e. passive gamma-ray spectrometers, have also been applied to explore patterns of soil erosion and soil deposition in the landscape through estimation of the distribution of artificially produced radionuclides such as 137-Caesium (¹³⁷Cs) in the soil. ¹³⁷Cs has been used widely as an environmental tracer to assess soil erosion in agricultural landscapes, based on point data along hillslope transects.

Here, we conducted a proximal soil sensing survey in the Lower Hunter Valley, one of the viticultural regions of NSW, Australia, to investigate short-term processes of soil genesis in this region using spatial and point-based data.