Joseph Bonaparte Gulf Bathymetry and Morphological Surfaces

Geoscience Australia provides a 30-meter resolution bathymetric grid and derived seafloor morphological surfaces for the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf marine park. The dataset applies a semi-hierarchical classification scheme, categorizing slopes into Plains (<2°), Slopes (2-10°), and Escarpments (>10°). This data supports the management of Australia's 58 Commonwealth marine parks, which cover 3.3 million square kilometers.

Use Cases

• Developing eco-narrative documents for marine parks based on interpreted seafloor geomorphology.
• Supporting marine park management plans with high-resolution bathymetric data.
• Analyzing seafloor habitat types using the derived morphological surface categories.
• Collating environmental data for oceanographic and ecological interpretations.

Strengths

• Derived from a high-resolution 30-meter bathymetric model for Northern Australia.
• Supports a network of 58 marine parks covering 40% of Australia's exclusive economic zone.
• Classification scheme is based on a published two-part morphology approach (Dove et al., 2016).

Limitations

• Key metadata such as column names, row count, size, license, and author are unknown.
• The dataset's spatial coverage is limited to the portion within the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf marine park.
• Update dates are inconsistent across entries, with one listed as 2026-05-14 and another as 2026-03-25.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia

Collection Method

Classification applied to the Beaman and Spinoccia (2018) 30-meter bathymetric grid.

Freshness

2026-05-14

Geography

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