DEA Coastal Ecosystems

A national dataset mapping Australia's mangrove, saltmarsh, intertidal, and intertidal seagrass ecosystems. It is produced by Digital Earth Australia using annual time-series of Sentinel-2 satellite imagery at 10-meter resolution for consistent continental-scale mapping. The dataset was last updated on 2026-06-05.

Use Cases

• National Environmental Ecosystem Accounts based on mapped coastal ecosystem extents.
• Coastal protection and hazard modelling based on the location of protective ecosystems like mangroves and saltmarshes.
• Monitoring ecological change over time based on annual time-series satellite imagery.
• Filling spatial and temporal gaps in higher-resolution expert mapping as a complementary product.

Strengths

• First national dataset to simultaneously map four key coastal ecosystem types for Australia.
• Provides annual time-series mapping at a continental scale using 10-meter resolution Sentinel-2 imagery.
• Designed to be a consistent and repeatable alternative to costly and labor-intensive field surveys.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and specific file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect temporal or spatial bias inherent to the satellite imagery source and processing methods.

Provenance

Source

Digital Earth Australia (DEA), hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Collection Method

Generated from annual time-series of publicly available Sentinel-2 satellite imagery using Earth Observation techniques.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-05 06:14:57.014415; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia