National Gravity Compilation 2019: Half Vertical Derivative Grid of Australia

A 2019 compilation of nearly 1.4 million gravity stations from the Australian National Gravity Database, supplemented by offshore data, used to generate a geophysical grid. The grid has a cell size of 0.00417 degrees (approximately 435m) and shows the half vertical derivative of de-trended global isostatic residual anomalies over Australia and its continental margins. Ground data were acquired by government, industry, and research organizations from the 1940s to 2019, with station spacing varying from 11 km to less than 1 km.

Use Cases

• Map subsurface geological structures based on gravity anomaly data.
• Model crustal density variations for tectonic studies based on the de-trended global isostatic residual.
• Support mineral and petroleum exploration by interpreting the half vertical derivative grid to highlight geological features.

Strengths

• Derived from nearly 1.4 million gravity stations from a national database.
• Combines ground observations from the 1940s onward with offshore global gravity data.
• Processed and quality-checked by Geoscience Australia geophysicists to be fit-for-purpose.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic and temporal bias inherent to the aggregation of decades of surveys from multiple sources.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data, incorporating data from Commonwealth, State, Territory Governments, industry, universities, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Collection Method

Ground and marine gravity observations processed via standard methods and a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).

Time Range

1940s to September 2019

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 13:33:18.038410; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia and its continental margins