Joseph Bonaparte Gulf 30 m Bathymetry and Derived Morphological Surfaces

Geoscience Australia developed a 30-meter resolution bathymetric grid for the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf within Australia's marine park network. The data release includes derived seafloor morphological surfaces classified into three categories: Plain (<2°), Slope (2-10°), and Escarpment (>10°). This work supports the management of 58 Commonwealth marine parks covering 3.3 million square kilometers.

Use Cases

• Classifying seafloor slope into morphological categories (Plain, Slope, Escarpment) based on the Dove et al. (2016) two-part scheme.
• Supporting the development of 'eco-narrative' documents for marine parks by providing interpreted seafloor geomorphology data.
• Informing marine park management plans through the collation and interpretation of existing environmental data.
• Analyzing bathymetric features within the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf region of Northern Australia.

Strengths

• High-resolution 30-meter bathymetric grid provides detailed seafloor topography.
• Derived products use a published, semi-hierarchical morphological classification scheme (Dove et al., 2016).
• Data supports the management of a network of 58 marine parks covering 3.3 million square kilometers.

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.
• Freshness should be verified as the last update is listed as 2026-04-20.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Collation and interpretation of existing environmental data, including the Beaman and Spinoccia (2018) 30 m grid.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-20 03:00:11.846042

Geography

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