AUSTREA-1: Seafloor Mapping of Southeast Australia and Great Australian Bight

120,000 km² of seabed was mapped during a 25-day survey in January 2000, an area about 1.5 times the size of Tasmania. The Australian Geological Survey Organisation collected swath-bathymetry, seismic, magnetic, and oceanographic data aboard the vessel L'Atalante. This work was done for marine zone planning, resource assessment, and geological research as part of Australia's Oceans Policy.

Use Cases

• Modeling benthic habitats based on detailed seabed terrain and backscatter imagery.
• Assessing petroleum and mineral resource potential based on seismic profiles and magnetic data.
• Planning marine protected areas based on mapped features like volcanic seamounts and canyon systems.
• Studying oceanographic conditions based on underway measurements of temperature, salinity, and currents.

Strengths

• Covers a large, mapped area of 120,000 km².
• Includes multiple complementary data types: bathymetry, seismic, magnetics, and oceanography.
• The description states data quality was 'mostly excellent'.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is from a single survey in 2000; freshness should be verified for contemporary applications.
• Primary file formats are PDF and HTML, which may require extraction for computational analysis.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Swath-mapping and geophysical survey using the research vessel L'Atalante.

Time Range

Survey conducted from 18 December 1999 to 11 January 2000.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-05 06:34:18.257470; freshness should be verified

Geography

Southeast Australian margin, Lord Howe Island, central Great Australian Bight, and waters off Tasmania.