National Gravity Compilation 2019: Australian Geophysical Grid

Nearly 1.8 million gravity observations underpin this 2019 national grid of Australia, integrating ground stations, airborne surveys, and global marine data. The resulting raster image, with a cell size of approximately 435 meters, maps subsurface density variations in gravity units (µm/s²). Geoscience Australia processed and quality-checked this compilation to reveal geological structures for resource and environmental applications.

Use Cases

• Mineral exploration targeting based on mapped gravity anomalies indicating subsurface density contrasts.
• Regional geological mapping and structural interpretation using the processed gravity grid.
• Integrating airborne gravity gradiometry data to improve resolution in areas with sparse ground data.
• Academic research into Australia's crustal architecture and geodynamic processes.

Strengths

• Integrates a large volume of observations: approximately 1.4 million ground stations, 345,000 line-km of airborne gravity, and 106,000 line-km of airborne gravity gradiometry.
• Data quality is explicitly checked by Geoscience Australia geophysicists to be fit-for-purpose.
• Combines multi-source data from government, industry, and academia collected from the 1940s to present.

Limitations

• Specific column names and data schema are not provided in the available metadata.
• The listed 'last updated' dates (2026) are in the future relative to the dataset's 2019 vintage, indicating potential metadata errors.
• License information is not specified.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, incorporating data from Commonwealth/State/Territory Governments, mining industry, universities, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Collection Method

Standard processing of ground, airborne, and marine gravity measurements to produce a detrended isostatic residual (DGIR) grid.

Time Range

1940s to 2019

Freshness

The dataset compilation is from September 2019, though platform metadata lists a last updated date of 2026-04-20.

Geography

Australia and surrounding offshore regions