Seabed Sediment Composition in Australia's Petrel Sub-Basin, 2012

Spatially continuous raster grids at 0.0025-degree resolution detail the weight percentage of gravel, mud, and sand across the seabed. This dataset supersedes previous predictions for the Petrel sub-basin with demonstrated improvements in accuracy. It was published by the Australian Ocean Data Network and last updated in June 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling benthic habitats based on sediment grain size fractions.
• Planning subsea cable or pipeline routes based on seabed substrate stability.
• Calibrating regional oceanographic models with updated seabed composition data.
• Assessing sediment transport and erosion patterns at a basin scale.

Strengths

• Provides continuous spatial predictions at a 0.0025 decimal degree resolution.
• Supersedes previous basin predictions with demonstrated improvements in accuracy.
• Covers three key sediment fractions (gravel, mud, sand) as weight percentages.

Limitations

• Accuracy varies based on underlying data density and seabed complexity, with artefacts present in regions with insufficient samples.
• Intended for basin-scale use and may not be appropriate for smaller-scale analysis in sparsely sampled areas.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Likely derived from seabed samples and spatial interpolation, as described.

Time Range

2012

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-05 06:10:59.755001; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Petrel sub-basin within the Australian continental Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).