Digital Earth Australia Coastlines is a continental dataset providing annual shorelines and rates of coastal change for Australia's over 30,000 km coastline from 1988 to the present. The product from Geoscience Australia combines satellite data with tidal modelling to map the typical coastline location at mean sea level for each year. It enables the examination of coastal erosion and growth trends at local and continental scales.
Use Cases
- Monitoring and mapping rates of coastal erosion based on annual shoreline positions.
- Prioritizing coastal management actions based on historical coastline change patterns.
- Modeling how coastlines respond to drivers like extreme weather events or sea level rise.
- Supporting geomorphological studies of how and why coastlines have changed over time.
Strengths
- Covers the entire Australian coastline, which is over 30,000 km long.
- Provides annual data from 1988 to the present, enabling long-term 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 and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
Provenance
- Source
- Geoscience Australia Data
- Collection Method
- Combines satellite data from the Digital Earth Australia program with tidal modelling.
- Time Range
- 1988 to present
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-04-30 14:31:35.140138; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Entire Australian coastline