Land use potential models
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Summary
The department's Soil and Land Program has developed a range of land use potential models, which have been funded on a project-by-project basis. All models and their outputs (maps) are considered preliminary as they are yet to be extensively ground-truthed.
This page will help you:
- understand the modelling concepts implemented
- access available land use models.
Modelling land use potential
The department's Soil and Land Program has developed modelling methodologies that use available soil and land attribute spatial datasets to assess the potential of land for specific uses.
Other spatial datasets such as rainfall can also be incorporated within such models, in which case the term ‘land use suitability’ is used. These are predominantly ‘most limiting factor’ models, where land and soil conditions are matched against conceptual criteria such as the landscape and soil conditions favoured by a particular plant species, and particular limiting conditions (e.g. high salinity levels) dictate the final land use potential category.
Five categories are used to highlight levels of potential or suitability, as per FAO 1976:
- highly suitable
- moderately suitable
- marginally suitable
- currently not suitable
- permanently not suitable.
These land use suitability assessments are provided as mapping or data outputs through the Data SA portal.
Land use potential models
Non-standard soil and land attributes and other models
The soil and land attribute datasets have previously been used to support a range of projects to inform management, policy decisions, land use or infrastructure development. These have been designed to meet individual customer needs, such as:
- identifying high-value primary production areas and arable land
- suitability for farm dams
- risk of soil structure decline due to irrigation
- potential soil biological activity levels
- corrosion potential to infrastructure
- assessing risk to infrastructure due to soil reactivity potential (shrink-swell characteristics).
Find out more:
Page Updated: May 2026
