National Gravity Compilation 2019: First Vertical Derivative Grid of Australia

Nearly 1.4 million gravity stations from a total of 1.8 million observations were used to create this continental-scale geophysical grid. Geoscience Australia produced this 2019 compilation from ground data collected since the 1940s and offshore data from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The grid shows the first vertical derivative of de-trended global isostatic residual anomalies at a cell size of approximately 435 meters.

Use Cases

• Map subsurface geological structures based on gravity anomaly data.
• Model crustal density variations for tectonic research based on the processed isostatic residual.
• Integrate with other geophysical datasets for mineral prospectivity analysis based on the continental-scale coverage.

Strengths

• Derived from nearly 1.4 million quality-checked gravity stations from a national database.
• Combines ground data collected from the 1940s onward with v28.1 of the Global Gravity grid for offshore coverage.
• Processed via standard methods and a Fast Fourier Transform to produce a first vertical derivative grid.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Ground station spacing varies from 11 km to less than 1 km, indicating non-uniform spatial resolution.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data, supplemented by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA, and NGA.

Collection Method

Grid generated from the Australian National Gravity Database and global marine data, processed via standard geophysical methods and FFT.

Time Range

Ground data from the 1940s to September 2019.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-20 03:06:55.617465; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia and its continental margins.