Seabed Environments of Eastern Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, Northern Australia

A seabed mapping survey over carbonate banks, channels, and sediment plains on the Van Diemen Rise in the eastern Joseph Bonaparte Gulf. The survey obtained detailed geological and biological data from 63 stations to investigate the region's late-Quaternary evolution and relationships between the physical environment and biota. Geoscience Australia and the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences conducted the survey, which collected 1,154 square kilometres of multibeam sonar data and 340 line-km of shallow sub-bottom profiles.

Use Cases

• Modeling late-Quaternary seabed evolution based on geological and geophysical data.
• Investigating relationships between physical environment and benthic biodiversity for prediction.
• Assessing sediment and water quality for surrogacy research using geochemical data.
• Understanding sediment transport dynamics based on oceanographic wave, tide, and current data.
• Putting benthic biodiversity into a biogeographic context for the Arafura-Timor Sea region.

Strengths

• Multibeam sonar data provides 100% seabed coverage for four study areas.
• Survey includes data from 63 geological and biological sampling stations.
• Collects 1,154 square kilometres of multibeam sonar data and 340 line-km of sub-bottom profiles.
• Integrates geological, biological, geochemical, and oceanographic data in a novel approach.

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 geographic bias inherent to the specific survey area.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Seabed mapping survey via multibeam sonar, supplemented with geological and biological sampling.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 15:32:14.173765; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Eastern Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, Van Diemen Rise, Northern Australia.