Forster Pacific Palms Cape Hawke Seabed Bathymetry and Backscatter Survey, 2019-2022

A 2019-2022 multibeam sonar survey of the Forster Pacific Palms Cape Hawke seabed in NSW, Australia, conducted by the NSW Department of Planning and Environment. The dataset provides 5-meter resolution 32-bit floating point geotiff files of bathymetry and backscatter, processed using Hypack, R2Sonic GUI, POSView, POSPac, Qimera, and FMGT software. It was funded by the SeabedNSW program and HabMap Program to establish a baseline and map seabed type distribution.

Use Cases

• Modeling coastal erosion and sediment transport based on high-resolution bathymetry.
• Classifying seabed habitats (e.g., sand, rock, seagrass) based on backscatter intensity data.
• Creating baseline maps for marine park management and conservation planning.
• Integrating seabed data with hydrodynamic models for coastal engineering projects.

Strengths

• Data collected over a 3.5-year period (March 2019 to August 2022), providing temporal depth.
• High 5-meter spatial resolution for detailed seabed analysis.
• Standard operating procedures and a survey report provide documented methodology.
• Data processed through a defined software pipeline (Hypack, R2Sonic GUI, POSPac, Qimera, FMGT).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

NSW Department of Planning and Environment (DPE)

Collection Method

Multibeam survey acquired using an R2Sonic 2022 sonar onboard the Research Vessel Bombora.

Time Range

2019-03-01 to 2022-08-12

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-28 12:43:23.886306; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Forster Pacific Palms Cape Hawke, New South Wales, Australia