Shallow Reef Feature Boundaries for Northern and Western Australia

North and West Australian Tropical Reef Features provides mapping of 11,000 shallow coral reef, rocky reef, and sand bank feature boundaries. The dataset was created by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) under the NESP MaC 3.17 project, with a last update recorded in 2026. It covers tropical waters from the Houtman Abrolhos Islands to Western Cape York, including offshore islands like Lord Howe and Christmas Island.

Use Cases

• Environmental accounting based on mapped boundaries of biologically active reef features.
• Marine management planning based on the spatial extent of coral and rocky reefs.
• Research site selection based on identified areas of likely high biological activity.
• Assessing habitat connectivity based on the inclusion of large sand banks as indicators of current flow.

Strengths

• Contains 11,000 manually digitized feature boundaries.
• Covers a broad geographic area spanning Western Australia, Northern Territory, and Queensland.
• Features were validated using withheld field observations.
• Explicitly complements existing mapping for the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea.

Limitations

• Only includes reefs shallower than approximately 5-40 meters, omitting deeper hard substrate.
• Feature classification is based on expert assessment of satellite imagery, not direct field observations for all entries.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), NESP MaC 3.17 project.

Collection Method

Features were manually digitized from satellite imagery optimized for marine habitat clarity.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-04 21:47:01.719350; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Tropical north and west Australia, from Houtman Abrolhos Islands (WA) to Western Cape York (QLD), including Lord Howe Island, Norfolk Island, Christmas Island, and Cocos (Keeling) Islands.