Joseph Bonaparte Gulf 30 m Bathymetry and Derived Morphological Surfaces

Geoscience Australia provides a 30-meter resolution bathymetric grid and derived seafloor morphological surfaces for the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf region. The data supports the management of Australia's network of 58 marine parks, which cover 3.3 million square kilometers. The classification uses a two-part morphology approach to categorize the seafloor slope into Plains, Slopes, and Escarpments.

Use Cases

• Classify seafloor geomorphology based on the slope categories (Plain, Slope, Escarpment) defined in the description.
• Support marine park management planning by providing high-resolution bathymetric data for habitat interpretation.
• Contribute to 'eco-narrative' documents for marine parks by providing collated interpretations of seafloor structure.
• Analyze seabed slope characteristics for geological and ecological studies within Commonwealth waters.

Strengths

• High-resolution 30-meter bathymetric grid derived from a specified source model (Beaman and Spinoccia, 2018).
• Applies a published, semi-hierarchical seafloor classification scheme (Dove et al., 2016).
• Directly supports the management of a defined network of 58 marine parks covering 40% of Australia's exclusive economic zone.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description metadata is focused on context; specific data quality metrics require manual inspection.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Derived from the Beaman and Spinoccia (2018) 30 m depth model for Northern Australia, applying the morphological classification scheme of Dove et al. (2016).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 15:05:55.273636; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, within Australia's Commonwealth marine parks network.