Gifford Marine Park: Bathymetry and Seafloor Morphology Grids

Geoscience Australia provides bathymetry grids and derived morphological surface classifications for the Gifford Marine Park. The data supports management of Australia's network of 58 marine parks, covering 3.3 million square kilometres. It is used to develop eco-narrative documents interpreting seafloor geomorphology, oceanography, and ecology.

Use Cases

• Creating panchromatic hillshade visualizations of seafloor bathymetry for park illustration.
• Classifying seafloor slope into morphological surfaces (Plain, Slope, Escarpment) for habitat mapping.
• Informing marine park management plans and eco-narrative documents with interpreted environmental data.
• Supporting geological and ecological interpretations that rely on bathymetric grids and their derivatives.

Strengths

• Data is derived from Geoscience Australia's bathymetry holdings, processed at an optimum resolution for the sonar system used.
• Applies a published, two-part seafloor mapping morphology classification scheme (Dove et al., 2016).
• Directly supports the management of a large, nationally significant network of 58 marine parks.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing: specific grid resolution is not stated (only '30m' is in the title), and column names, row counts, file sizes, and license are unknown.
• The 'last updated' date (2026-04-30) is a future date, indicating a potential metadata error that casts doubt on timestamp accuracy.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, produced in collaboration with the Marine Biodiversity Hub and National Environmental Science Program.

Collection Method

Compiled and processed from Geoscience Australia's bathymetry data holdings, gridded based on vessel sonar system resolution.

Freshness

Last updated date is listed as 2026-04-30, which is a future date and may be an error.

Geography

Gifford Marine Park, within Australia's Commonwealth waters network spanning near-coastal to abyssal plain settings.