DEA Coastal Ecosystems

Annual time-series from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery provide consistent continental-scale mapping. The Digital Earth Australia (DEA) Coastal Ecosystems product suite is the first national dataset to simultaneously map Australia's mangrove, saltmarsh, intertidal, and intertidal seagrass ecosystems. It is hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network and was last updated on 2026-04-28.

Use Cases

• National Environmental Ecosystem Accounts based on mapped coastal habitat extents.
• State of the Environment reporting based on annual, continental-scale change detection.
• Coastal protection and hazard modelling based on ecosystem distribution data.
• Filling spatial and temporal gaps in higher-resolution expert mapping based on satellite-derived annual maps.

Strengths

• First national dataset to simultaneously map four key coastal ecosystem types for Australia.
• Provides annual time-series at 10-meter resolution using Sentinel-2 imagery.
• Enables consistent mapping at a continental scale, addressing challenges of traditional methods.

Limitations

• 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

Collection Method

Derived from publicly available Sentinel-2 satellite imagery using Earth Observation methods.

Time Range

Annual time-series (specific years not stated).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-28 15:28:03.873758; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia's coastline at a continental scale.