Australia and its continental margins are covered by a gravity anomaly grid derived from nearly 1.8 million observations. The grid combines ground, airborne, and offshore data, processed to a 435-meter cell size, and was released by the Australian Ocean Data Network. Data collection spans from the 1940s to 2019.
Use Cases
- Model subsurface geological structures based on Bouguer anomaly data.
- Identify mineral exploration targets based on gravity-derived density contrasts.
- Integrate gravity data with other geophysical surveys based on the combined ground and airborne sources.
- Calculate terrain corrections for gravity surveys based on the described use of bathymetry and topography.
Strengths
- Combines approximately 1.4 million ground stations with 345,000 line km of airborne gravity and 106,000 line km of airborne gravity gradiometry.
- Grid cell size is 0.00417 degrees (approximately 435 meters), providing a standardized resolution.
- Data quality was checked 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.
- Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to data_gov_au, with station spacing varying from 11 km to less than 1 km.
Provenance
- Source
- Australian Ocean Data Network
- Collection Method
- Processed from ground observations in the Australian National Gravity Database, supplemented with offshore data from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA, and NGA, and airborne surveys.
- Time Range
- 1940s to 2019
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-04-16 15:27:28.254750; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Australia and its continental margins