Darwin Harbour Benthic Habitat Maps for Sustainable Development Planning

Polygon data mapping 12 physical and biological benthic habitat categories in the upper reaches of Darwin Harbour's East and Middle Arms. The dataset was collected by the Australian Ocean Data Network to assist planning for a new township and is current as of March 3, 2016. It was created using a combination of remote-sensed and survey data.

Use Cases

• Modeling habitat suitability for marine species based on the 12 mapped benthic categories.
• Assessing environmental impact for coastal development projects based on habitat polygon data.
• Creating baseline maps for marine conservation and monitoring based on remote-sensed and survey data.
• Informing sustainable land-use planning for new townships based on marine habitat distribution.

Strengths

• Maps 12 distinct physical and biological benthic habitat categories.
• Combines remote-sensed data with ground survey data for validation.
• Dataset is actively maintained, with a last platform update recorded in July 2026.

Limitations

• The core data is current only as of March 2016, which may limit its relevance for recent environmental changes.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Remote-sensed and survey data collection.

Time Range

Data current as of 03/03/2016.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-22 01:15:25.472770; freshness should be verified

Geography

Upper reaches of East and Middle Arms, Darwin Harbour, Australia.