Australian National Gravity Grid 2019 with First Vertical Derivative Image

Nearly 1.8 million gravity observations, including 1.4 million ground stations and 451,000 line km of airborne surveys, were processed to create this 2019 national grid. Geoscience Australia compiled data from government, industry, and research sources dating from the 1940s to 2019, applying terrain corrections and a Fourier transform to produce a first vertical derivative image. The resulting grid has a cell size of approximately 435 meters and covers Australia and its continental margins.

Use Cases

• Model subsurface geological structures based on Bouguer gravity anomalies.
• Enhance mineral exploration targeting by interpreting the first vertical derivative image.
• Integrate gravity data with other geospatial layers for regional geological studies.
• Assess data coverage and resolution for specific Australian regions based on described station and line spacing.

Strengths

• Integrates nearly 1.8 million observations from multiple sources (ground, airborne, offshore).
• Includes 451,000 line kilometers of airborne gravity and gradiometry data to improve resolution.
• Applies standardized processing and quality checks by GA geophysicists.
• Provides a consistent national grid with a ~435m cell size.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic and temporal bias inherent to the aggregation of historical surveys.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Compilation and processing of ground observations from the Australian National Gravity Database, offshore data from Scripps/NOAA/NGA, and airborne surveys.

Time Range

1940s to 2019 (with grid representing data as of September 2019).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 25 17:09:14.203702; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia and its continental margins.