The Darwin Harbour Habitat Mapping Program provides a predicted seabed sand content grid for the Darwin and Bynoe Harbour regions. The dataset is a 10-meter resolution raster derived from 395 samples and seven environmental variables from multibeam sonar data collected between 2011 and 2017. This resource was created by Geoscience Australia, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and the Northern Territory Government's Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
Use Cases
- Modeling marine habitat suitability based on predicted sand content.
- Informing coastal development and dredging decisions using spatially continuous seabed composition data.
- Validating and improving seabed property prediction methods by comparing against the reported 84.8% accuracy improvement.
- Establishing environmental baselines for the Darwin Harbour region using the compiled survey data from 2011-2017.
Strengths
- Predictive accuracy is reported as high, with a VEcv of 39% for sand.
- Spatial resolution is 10 meters, providing detailed continuous coverage.
- The prediction method demonstrated an 84.8% improvement in accuracy for sand over a commonly used baseline (IDW).
- Data synthesis is based on 395 physical samples and seven high-resolution environmental variables.
Limitations
- Absences in predictions occur due to non-availability of predictive variables in some areas.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for some analytical methods.
Provenance
- Source
- Geoscience Australia (GA), Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), Northern Territory Government Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NTG-DENR).
- Collection Method
- Predictions derived from a compilation of multiple seabed surveys (GA0333, GA0341, GA0351, GA4452, GA0356, GA0358, GA0359) undertaken between 2011 and 2017.
- Time Range
- Survey data collected between 2011 and 2017.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-06-05 06:49:34.672856; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Greater Darwin Harbour and Bynoe Harbour region, northern Australian marine margin.