National Marine Sediments Database: Seafloor Characteristics for Australian Waters

25,000 seafloor sediment samples with 138,000 recorded properties were collated by the National Oceans Office and Geoscience Australia. Maps of sediment properties like grain size and carbonate content were produced for the Northern Planning Area and the broader Australian Marine Jurisdiction. The project identified that about 70% of the total marine domain remains unmapped by measured sediment data.

Use Cases

• Modeling sediment mobility in shallow waters based on mean grain size data.
• Mapping benthic marine bioregions based on sediment classification and carbonate content.
• Identifying gaps in seafloor data coverage to guide future sampling efforts.

Strengths

• Contains approximately 25,000 samples with 138,000 recorded properties.
• Includes validated quantitative data used to produce maps of sediment distribution.
• Represents a first national-scale assessment of seafloor sediment data quality and coverage for Australia.

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.
• Significant geographic gaps exist, with about 70% of the marine domain unmapped by measured sediment data.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Collaborative project involving identification and collation of existing marine sediment data.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-23 03:04:37.235021; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australian Marine Jurisdiction, including the Northern Planning Area.