NSW Marine Habitats 2002: Environmental Classification for Regional Conservation

NSW Marine Habitats 2002 is an environmental classification developed with the NSW Marine Parks Authority Research Committee. The dataset describes nine habitat surrogates, including mangrove, seagrass, and subtidal reef, for regional marine conservation assessment. It represents a historic dataset providing transparency for the 2002 marine park systematic planning process.

Use Cases

• Regional marine conservation assessment based on the classification of nine habitat surrogates.
• Historical analysis of marine park planning processes based on the 2002 systematic planning context.
• Broad-scale biodiversity assessment for shelf marine bioregions based on the described habitat and ecosystem classes.
• Mapping coastal habitat distributions based on the geospatial environmental classification.

Strengths

• Classification covers nine specific habitat surrogates: mangrove, seagrass, saltmarsh, subtidal sediment, beach, intertidal rocky shore, subtidal reef, and island.
• Dataset is part of a related set of three used in a systematic assessment process, providing broader context.
• Provides transparency for a specific historical planning process from 2002.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Prepared using very low-cost techniques (unrectified API) and should not be relied upon for navigation.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, developed in conjunction with the NSW Marine Parks Authority Research Committee.

Collection Method

Prepared using very low-cost techniques (e.g., unrectified API) for regional-level assessment.

Time Range

2002

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-09 23:50:22.422497; freshness should be verified

Geography

New South Wales, Australia, specifically the Manning Shelf marine bioregion.