Joseph Bonaparte Gulf 30-Meter Bathymetry and Derived Seafloor Morphology

A 30-meter resolution bathymetric grid and derived morphological surfaces for the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf within Australia's marine park network. The data release supports the management of 58 Commonwealth marine parks covering 3.3 million square kilometers. Geoscience Australia produced this data, applying a semi-hierarchical seafloor classification scheme based on slope categories.

Use Cases

• Classifying seafloor slope into morphological surfaces (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 collated environmental data on bathymetry and derived products.

Strengths

• High-resolution 30-meter bathymetric grid.
• Data supports management of a network of 58 marine parks covering 40% of Australia's exclusive economic zone.
• Classification based on a published, peer-reviewed morphological scheme (Dove et al., 2016).

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.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the specific Gulf region.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, via the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Collection Method

Derived from the Beaman and Spinoccia (2018) 30 m bathymetry grid for Northern Australia.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 10:18:25.356145; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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