Coral Sea Marine Park Reef and Cay Boundaries from 2021-2025 Satellite Mapping

A 2021-2025 project by AIMS and Parks Australia developed high-quality GIS datasets mapping emergent and shallow marine features in the Coral Sea Marine Park. Features mapped include coral atoll platforms, reef boundaries, depth contours, and cays, using composite satellite imagery from Sentinel 2, Landsat 8-9, and Sentinel 3, with manual mapping and review. The goal was to improve the precision and spatial detail of existing reef maps, providing permanent identifiers for features.

Use Cases

• Marine habitat monitoring and conservation planning based on mapped coral reef boundaries and atoll platforms.
• Bathymetric analysis and shallow water modeling based on 5m and 20m depth contours.
• Island and cay ecosystem studies based on regions mapped above mean high water.
• Comparative reef studies with the Great Barrier Reef based on a similar mapping methodology.

Strengths

• Features were manually mapped and reviewed extensively, suggesting high quality control.
• Mapping integrates multiple satellite data sources (Sentinel 2, Landsat 8-9, Sentinel 3) and existing bathymetry surveys.
• The project developed a robust definition for coral reef boundaries based on hard substrate, aiming for consistent and repeatable mapping.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the Coral Sea Marine Park focus area.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, data_gov_au platform.

Collection Method

Manual mapping from composite satellite imagery (Sentinel 2, Landsat 8-9, Sentinel 3) with bathymetry surveys used for interpretation, calibration, and validation.

Time Range

Project conducted from 2021 to 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-16 02:52:16.920300; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Coral Sea Marine Park (CSMP).