Geographe Marine Park Bathymetry Grid at 5-Meter Resolution

Australia's marine park network covers 3.3 million square kilometres, or 40 per cent of its exclusive economic zone. This dataset provides a 5-meter resolution bathymetric grid for Geographe Marine Park, created by compiling and processing Geoscience Australia's sonar data holdings. The data supports the development of 'eco-narratives' for park management, which interpret seafloor geomorphology, oceanography, and ecology.

Use Cases

• Seafloor habitat classification based on the Dove et al. (2016) morphological surface categories (Plain, Slope, Escarpment).
• Marine park management planning based on high-resolution bathymetry and derived hillshade products.
• Geomorphological analysis of the seafloor based on slope and elevation data from the compiled bathymetry grid.

Strengths

• High-resolution bathymetric data gridded at 5 meters.
• Data is part of a national program managing 58 marine parks across 3.3 million square kilometres.
• Supports a new, semi-hierarchical seafloor classification scheme (Dove et al., 2016).

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

Geoscience Australia, via the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Collection Method

Compiled and processed from Geoscience Australia's bathymetry data holdings, gridded at optimal resolution from vessel sonar systems.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-04 05:30:34.069297; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Geographe Marine Park, within Australian Commonwealth waters.