National Gravity Compilation 2019: Australian Airborne and Ground Gravity Anomaly Grid

A 2019 compilation integrates nearly 1.4 million ground gravity stations and over 450,000 line kilometers of airborne gravity and gradiometry data, collected from the 1940s onward. The grid, with a cell size of approximately 435 meters, was processed by Geoscience Australia and includes terrain corrections using bathymetry and topography. It provides a half vertical derivative of complete Bouguer anomalies for Australia and its continental margins.

Use Cases

• Map subsurface geological structures based on gravity anomaly data.
• Identify potential mineral exploration targets based on density contrasts in the crust.
• Integrate gravity data with other geophysical surveys for regional geological modeling.
• Study continental margin geology using combined onshore and offshore gravity observations.

Strengths

• Integrates a large volume of data, including nearly 1.4 million ground stations and 451,000 line km of airborne surveys.
• Data quality was checked by GA geophysicists to ensure it is fit-for-purpose.
• Combines multiple data sources (ground, airborne, offshore) for comprehensive continental coverage.
• Uses terrain corrections from both onshore topography and offshore bathymetry data.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and specific file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic and temporal bias inherent to the aggregation of surveys from the 1940s to 2019.

Provenance

Source

Australian National Gravity Database (ANGD), Global Gravity grid (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA, NGA), and various government and industry surveys.

Collection Method

Processed ground and airborne gravity observations, with terrain corrections, combined into a grid via Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).

Time Range

1940s to 2019 (data collection), compiled as of September 2019.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-04 08:39:53.392146; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia and its continental margins.