A multibeam sonar survey mapped a shelf valley system up to 220 meters deep and extending over 90 kilometers across the continental shelf at the northern end of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The data supports a new conceptual model for the formation of tidally incised shelf valleys, challenging the typical attribution to fluvial erosion. This dataset is provided by Geoscience Australia Data and was last updated in April 2026.
Use Cases
- Testing geomorphological models of valley formation based on bathymetric survey data.
- Analyzing the relationship between tidal currents and shelf erosion based on the mapped valley system.
- Comparing shelf valley characteristics across different carbonate shelf environments based on the Great Barrier Reef example.
Strengths
- Describes a specific, mapped valley system with a depth of up to 220 meters.
- Covers a significant spatial extent of over 90 kilometers across the continental shelf.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
Provenance
- Source
- Geoscience Australia Data
- Collection Method
- Multibeam sonar survey
- Time Range
- null
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-04-20 01:43:28.363241; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Northern Great Barrier Reef, Australia, adjacent to the southern edge of the Gulf of Papua