National Gravity Compilation 2019: Airborne and Ground Gravity Anomaly Grid for Australia

Nearly 1.8 million gravity observations, including 1.4 million ground stations and 451,000 line kilometers of airborne surveys, were used to create this 2019 compilation. The grid, with a cell size of approximately 435 meters, reveals sub-surface geological structure by measuring density variations in rocks. Geoscience Australia processed and quality-checked data from government, industry, and academic sources dating from the 1940s to produce this half vertical derivative image of complete Bouguer anomalies.

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 enhanced geological modeling.
• Train machine learning models to predict lithology or basement depth from gravity signatures.

Strengths

• Integrates a large volume of data: nearly 1.8 million gravity observations from multiple sources.
• Combines ground, airborne gravity, and gravity gradiometry data for improved resolution where ground data was insufficient.
• Includes terrain corrections calculated using both offshore bathymetry and onshore topography data.
• Data has undergone quality checks by Geoscience Australia geophysicists to be fit-for-purpose.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Station and line spacing varies significantly across the continent, which may create regional inconsistencies in data density.
• The description metadata is limited; actual data quality and specific processing parameters require manual inspection of the downloaded files.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments, mining industry, universities, and research organisations.

Collection Method

Ground and airborne gravity observations processed via standard methods and FFT to create a spherical cap Bouguer anomaly grid.

Time Range

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

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 12:45:57.664418; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia and its continental margins.