Marine Survey 282: Shallow Gas and Benthic Habitat Mapping in the Arafura Sea

Geoscience Australia's Marine Survey 282 report presents findings on shallow gas and benthic habitats in the Arafura Sea. The survey confirmed microbial gas in Holocene mud-filled channels and identified deeper gas migration linked to fault systems. Detailed seabed mapping correlated high biodiversity with hard substrates and low-relief benthos with soft, pockmarked areas.

Use Cases

• Mapping pockmark field density and distribution based on reported densities of ~350/km2.
• Modeling gas migration pathways based on described links between Proterozoic, Jurassic, and modern faults.
• Classifying benthic habitats based on correlations between substrate type (hard vs. soft) and faunal biodiversity/abundance.
• Investigating microbial gas origin and distribution related to Holocene mud-filled channels mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Report includes confirmed gas presence from core sample analysis.
• Describes specific pockmark field densities (~350/km2) and benthic coverage (less than 5% in soft areas).
• Correlates multiple data types: geophysical indicators, core material, sub-bottom profiles, and conventional seismic data.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data files are in HTML and PDF formats, which may require extraction for computational analysis.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Marine survey involving geophysical data collection and core sampling.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06 27 17:29:50.164074; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Arafura Sea