Carnarvon Shelf Reef Polygons Digitized from 2008 Marine Survey

Carnarvon Shelf reef polygons were manually digitized from multibeam echosounder data collected on marine survey GA0308 in August/September 2008. Reef areas were defined as exposed, hard substrate raised above the surrounding seafloor and mapped using bathymetry, backscatter, and derivatives at a scale of 1:10,000. This dataset is published with the permission of the CEO, Geoscience Australia and aggregated by the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Use Cases

• Modeling reef habitat distribution based on manually digitized polygon boundaries.
• Analyzing the relationship between hard substrate and bathymetric derivatives like slope and contours.
• Mapping seafloor geomorphology based on multibeam echosounder bathymetry and backscatter data.

Strengths

• Features were mapped at a detailed scale of 1:10,000.
• Data is derived from a specific marine survey (GA0308) conducted in August/September 2008.
• Polygons were manually digitized using multiple data sources including bathymetry, backscatter, slope, hillshading, and contours.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data reflects a specific temporal and geographic bias from a single 2008 survey.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, via the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Collection Method

Manual digitization from multibeam echosounder datasets.

Time Range

August/September 2008.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-23 05:04:20.716298; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Carnarvon Shelf, Australia.