Digital Earth Australia (DEA) Coastal Ecosystems is a national dataset mapping Australia's mangrove, saltmarsh, intertidal, and intertidal seagrass ecosystems. It uses annual Sentinel-2 satellite imagery time-series to provide consistent 10-meter resolution mapping at a continental scale. The dataset is hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network and was last updated on 2026-06-17.
Use Cases
- Generate National Environmental Ecosystem Accounts based on mapped coastal ecosystem extents.
- Support State of the Environment reporting at national and regional scales using the consistent annual time-series.
- Fill spatial and temporal gaps in higher-resolution expert mapping (e.g., from aerial surveys) as a complementary product.
- Model coastal protection and hazards by integrating the ecosystem maps with other terrestrial and ocean datasets.
- Monitor ecological change and assess the effectiveness of conservation interventions using the annual time-series data.
Strengths
- Provides the first national dataset simultaneously mapping four key coastal ecosystem types for Australia.
- Offers 10-meter spatial resolution derived from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.
- Enables consistent, repeatable continental-scale analysis through annual time-series data.
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 and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
Provenance
- Source
- Australian Ocean Data Network / Digital Earth Australia
- Collection Method
- Generated using Earth Observation (EO) and publicly available Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-06-17 01:39:21.144215; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Australia (continental scale)