National Gravity Compilation 2019: Airborne DGIR 1VD Grid for Australia

Australia and its continental margins are covered by a gravity anomaly grid with a cell size of approximately 435 meters. The grid is derived from nearly 1.4 million ground stations and over 450,000 line kilometers of airborne surveys, compiled from data collected from the 1940s to 2019. It shows the first vertical derivative of de-trended global isostatic residual anomalies, processed by Geoscience Australia.

Use Cases

• Map subsurface geological structures based on gravity anomaly patterns.
• Enhance mineral exploration targeting by integrating gravity data with other geophysical surveys.
• Model continental crustal thickness and isostatic compensation based on processed residual anomalies.
• Improve resolution in areas with sparse ground data using included airborne gravity and gradiometry surveys.

Strengths

• Integrates approximately 1.8 million gravity observations from multiple sources.
• Includes over 450,000 line kilometers of airborne gravity and gravity gradiometry data for improved resolution.
• Ground station spacing in major parts of the continent is between 2.5 and 7 kilometers.
• Data quality was checked by GA geophysicists to ensure it is fit-for-purpose.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The temporal coverage spans from the 1940s to 2019, which may introduce inconsistencies in data collection methods over time.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Processed from ground observations in the Australian National Gravity Database and offshore data from Scripps/NOAA/NGA, supplemented by airborne surveys.

Time Range

1940s to 2019

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 10:15:17.114228; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia and its continental margins