Seagrass Habitat Mapping in Port Phillip Bay

Nine regions in Port Phillip Bay were mapped for seagrass habitat in April 2011. The polygon data, derived from aerial photography, supports the Baywide Seagrass Monitoring Program for the Channel Deepening Project. Additional datasets provide mapping for the Swan Bay region in 2010 and for nine regions in 2009.

Use Cases

• Assessing seagrass coverage changes over time based on annual aerial surveys from 2009-2011.
• Monitoring environmental impacts of the Channel Deepening Project on marine habitats.
• Conducting spatial analysis of seagrass distribution across nine defined assessment regions.
• Establishing a baseline for marine ecosystem health in Port Phillip Bay.

Strengths

• Provides multi-year temporal coverage with data from 2009, 2010, and 2011.
• Data is explicitly mapped from aerial photography, suggesting a direct observational method.
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license, facilitating reuse.
• Cross-platform presence on data.gov.au indicates official curation and importance.

Limitations

• Column names and data schema are unknown, limiting understanding of specific attributes.
• Exact row counts and file sizes are not provided for any of the datasets.
• The most recent data point is from 2011, which may not reflect current conditions.

Provenance

Source

Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (Victoria, Australia), for the Port of Melbourne Corporation.

Collection Method

Mapping from aerial photography, undertaken for the Baywide Seagrass Monitoring Program (CDP_ENV_MD_022 Rev5).

Time Range

2009-2011

Freshness

Metadata was last updated on 2026-04-09, though the underlying data is from 2009-2011.

Geography

Port Phillip Bay and Swan Bay, Victoria, Australia.