Great Australian Bight Seabed Character And Geomorphology GIS

Geoscience Australia's South and Southwest Regional Project conducted a regional seafloor mapping study during 2000/2001. The work delineated four major geomorphological features and defined five acoustic echo facies for the Great Australian Bight area. The results were digitized into a GIS to support biological, environmental, and economic assessments for regional marine planning.

Use Cases

• Analyze the distribution of five defined acoustic echo facies (I, II, IIIA, IIIC, IIID) across the Great Australian Bight shelf, slope, and abyssal plain.
• Map the boundaries of four major geomorphological features (continental shelf, marine terraces, continental slope, continental rise) using the delineated GIS layers.
• Correlate seabed character attributes with the locations of specific sedimentary basins, plateaus, terraces, and canyons captured in the GIS.
• Study sedimentary processes by examining the spatial relationship between echo facies types and features like submarine canyons on the continental slope.

Strengths

• GIS data includes key attributes for every defined echo facies.
• Mapping covers a major regional marine area, the Great Australian Bight.

Limitations

• Data collection occurred over two decades ago (2000/2001), limiting contemporary analysis.
• Specific row counts, column details, and sample sizes for the underlying GIS data are unknown.
• The seabed character mapping was performed only for the Great Australian Bight area, not the entire study region.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, originating from Geoscience Australia's South and Southwest Regional Project.

Collection Method

Interpretation of 3.5kHz echo-sounding records and high-resolution seismic profiles, ground-truthed against seafloor samples, and digitized into a GIS.

Time Range

2000/2001

Freshness

null

Geography

Great Australian Bight (GAB) and the South and Southwest (SSW) region of Australia's marine margin.