Gifford Marine Park Bathymetry and Seafloor Morphology Grids

Geoscience Australia provides bathymetry grids and morphological surface classifications for the Gifford Marine Park at 30-meter resolution. The data supports the management of Australia's network of 58 marine parks, which cover 3.3 million square kilometres. This release is part of the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Marine Biodiversity Hub Project D1.

Use Cases

• Modeling seafloor habitats based on bathymetric slope and morphological surface categories.
• Creating visualizations of underwater terrain by combining bathymetric data with hillshade imagery.
• Supporting the development of 'eco-narrative' documents that interpret seafloor geomorphology, oceanography, and ecology.
• Informing marine park management plans through collated environmental data interpretations.

Strengths

• Gridded at a 30-meter resolution, which suggests a detailed spatial scale for analysis.
• Derived from Geoscience Australia's bathymetry data holdings, indicating an authoritative source.
• Includes a semi-hierarchical seafloor classification scheme based on a published two-part morphology approach.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description notes the data is not to be used for navigational purposes, limiting its application scope.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Created by compiling and processing Geoscience Australia's existing bathymetry data holdings, gridded at optimal resolution based on sonar systems.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-20 02:21:38.570683; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Gifford Marine Park, within Australia's Commonwealth waters network.