Benthic Foraminifera and Sediment Data from Torres Strait to Gulf of Papua

Three areas across the Torres Strait-Gulf of Papua shelf form a transect from the Fly River Delta to the shelf edge. The dataset likely contains sediment characteristics and relative abundances of benthic foraminiferal assemblages at the order level, as well as distribution patterns of individual species. The data was contributed by the Australian Ocean Data Network and last updated on 2026-06-27.

Use Cases

• Modeling habitat types based on correlations between foraminiferal species and environmental variables like water depth and sediment composition.
• Assessing sediment reworking and preservation using the developed foraminiferal preservation scale and taphonomic features.
• Comparing total microbiotic communities with foraminiferal assemblages across different shelf environments.
• Analyzing the influence of factors such as percent carbonate mud, gravel, organic carbon flux, temperature, and salinity on species distribution.

Strengths

• Data covers a transect across the shelf from the Fly River Delta to the shelf edge near the Great Barrier Reef.
• Analysis includes a developed foraminiferal preservation scale to assess reworking in surface material.
• Multivariate statistics were applied to analyze relationships between environmental attributes and species distributions.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network via data_gov_au

Collection Method

Detailed study of sediments and benthic fossil biota from three selected areas.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-27 20:35:03.786096; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Torres Strait-Gulf of Papua region, from the Fly River Delta to the shelf edge.