Seabed Character Mapping in the Great Australian Bight

Geoscience Australia's 2000/2001 mapping study delineated four major geomorphological features and five acoustic echo facies for the Great Australian Bight. The report underpins biological, environmental, and economic assessments for Regional Marine Planning. Its digitized GIS data includes boundaries for continental shelves, slopes, rises, and terraces, along with attributes for each acoustic facies.

Use Cases

• Modeling sediment transport and deposition based on the distribution of five defined acoustic facies.
• Planning marine protected areas using GIS-captured boundaries of geomorphological features like the Eyre and Ceduna Terraces.
• Assessing geological inheritance on seabed character by analyzing the mapped acoustic facies distribution across the margin and abyssal plain.

Strengths

• Data is integrated into a Geographical Information System (GIS) with captured boundaries and key attributes.
• Study defines five distinct acoustic echo facies (I, II, IIIA, IIIC, IIID) based on interpretation of 3.5kHz echo-sounding records and seismic profiles.
• Mapping covers four major geomorphological features: continental shelf, marine terraces, continental slope, and continental rise.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect temporal bias inherent to the 2000/2001 collection period.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Regional seafloor mapping study using 3.5kHz echo-sounding records, high-resolution seismic profiles, and seafloor sample groundtruthing.

Time Range

Data collected during 2000/2001.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 02:57:03.226484; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Great Australian Bight (GAB), specifically the South and Southwest (SSW) region including the continental shelf, slope, rise, and the South Australian abyssal plain.