Great Barrier Reef Coastal Zone Extent for Conservation Planning

A single polygon defines the coastal zone considered most appropriate for investigating conservation planning impacts on the Great Barrier Reef. The zone was defined through stakeholder workshops and includes terrestrial areas up to five kilometres from the coast or the 10-metre AHD contour, plus marine areas influenced by secondary flood plumes. This dataset, hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network, is intended to support spatial planning of coastal development to protect the GBR World Heritage Area.

Use Cases

• Modeling terrestrial runoff impacts on marine ecosystems based on the defined coastal zone boundary.
• Planning coastal development restrictions for conservation based on the integrated terrestrial and marine zone.
• Analyzing the spatial overlap of human activities and sensitive marine habitats based on the stakeholder-defined categories.
• Assessing water quality threats from intensive agriculture and other land uses within the coastal zone.

Strengths

• Boundary definition incorporates both a formal government definition and four stakeholder-derived categories (intensive agriculture, geomorphology, vegetation, human presence).
• Marine offshore boundary is defined using a published scientific method based on maximum flood plume extent.
• Dataset is provided in a standard geospatial format (shapefile) suitable for GIS analysis.

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 is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network (via data.gov.au), associated with the NERP TE 9.4 project and JCU.

Collection Method

Defined through stakeholder consultation and workshops, integrating government definitions and geomorphological/flood plume modeling.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-10 19:58:37.687852; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Great Barrier Reef coast, Queensland, Australia.