Digital Earth Australia Coastlines: Annual Shorelines and Change Rates from 1988

Digital Earth Australia Coastlines is a continental dataset providing annual shoreline positions and rates of coastal change for Australia's over 30,000 km coastline from 1988 to the present. It combines satellite data from Geoscience Australia's Digital Earth Australia program with tidal modelling to map the typical coastline location at mean sea level each year. The dataset is hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Use Cases

• Monitor and map rates of coastal erosion along the Australian coastline based on annual shoreline positions.
• Prioritize and evaluate the impacts of local coastal management based on historical coastline change trends.
• Model how coastlines respond to drivers of change, including extreme weather events or sea level rise, using the time-series of continental shoreline data.
• Support geomorphological studies of how and why coastlines have changed across time by examining patterns of coastal change.

Strengths

• Covers Australia's entire coastline of over 30,000 km.
• Provides annual shoreline data from 1988 to the present, enabling multi-decadal trend analysis.
• Combines satellite data with tidal modelling to map the coastline at mean sea level.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Freshness should be verified as the last update date is in the future (2026-06-16).

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, using data from Geoscience Australia's Digital Earth Australia program.

Collection Method

Combines satellite data with tidal modelling.

Time Range

1988 to present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-16 23:24:45.011982

Geography

Entire Australian coastline