National Gravity Compilation 2019: Half-Vertical Derivative Grid of Australia

Nearly 1.4 million gravity stations from the Australian National Gravity Database, supplemented with offshore data, were used to generate this 2019 grid. Geoscience Australia processed ground observations collected from the 1940s onward by government, industry, and research bodies. The resulting image represents the half vertical derivative of de-trended global isostatic residual anomalies at a cell size of approximately 435 meters.

Use Cases

• Interpret geological structure of the sub-surface based on processed gravity anomaly data.
• Model density variations in the Earth's crust for resource exploration based on the half vertical derivative grid.
• Integrate terrestrial and marine gravity data for continental-scale geophysical studies.
• Apply Fourier transform methods to gravity grids for enhanced feature detection.

Strengths

• Derived from nearly 1.4 million gravity stations within a national database.
• Integrates decades of data collected from the 1940s to present by multiple authoritative sources.
• Grid cell size is precisely defined as 0.00417 degrees (approximately 435m).
• Processing includes standard methods and quality checks by GA geophysicists to ensure fitness-for-purpose.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, incorporating data from Geoscience Australia, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA, and NGA.

Collection Method

Ground and marine gravity observations processed via standard methods and FFT to create a derived grid.

Time Range

Observations from the 1940s to September 2019.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 21:50:24.695026; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia and its continental margins.