Victorian Marine Habitat Map with 24 Biotope Complexes

DEECA's Victorian Statewide Marine Habitat Map 2023 represents 24 marine and coastal habitat complexes using Victoria's Combined Biotope Classification Scheme. The map was created by applying a Random Forest model to 32,998 ground-truth survey sites and 28 environmental properties at 10m resolution, achieving 89% accuracy, and synthesizing 17% of its area from existing higher-resolution mapping products.

Use Cases

• Train a habitat classifier using the 24 CBiCS Level 3 habitat complexes as labels against 28 environmental predictor variables.
• Analyze the spatial distribution of habitat complexes predicted by the Random Forest model with 89% out-of-bag accuracy.
• Integrate the 10m resolution environmental layers, such as the Digital Elevation Model and Chlorophyll a, for coastal ecosystem modeling.
• Validate new marine surveys against the 32,998 ground-truth habitat survey sites used in the model's training.

Strengths

• Model trained on a substantial set of 32,998 ground-truth habitat survey records.
• High predictive accuracy of 89% reported for the Random Forest model.
• Integrates data from multiple authoritative sources, with 83% of the area from new modeling and 17% from a synthesis of existing maps.
• Includes 28 environmental predictor variables mapped at a consistent 10-meter spatial resolution.

Limitations

• The dataset's underlying tabular structure, column definitions, and row count are not explicitly provided in the input.
• As a synthesized map product, it may inherit inconsistencies or varying resolutions from the integrated legacy mapping products.
• The 'notspecified' license status requires clarification before commercial or redistribution use.

Provenance

Source

Developed by DEECA (Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action) for the state of Victoria.

Collection Method

Created by applying a Random Forest machine learning algorithm to environmental and survey data, combined with a mosaic of synthesized existing habitat maps.

Time Range

Primary map version is 2023, incorporating historical survey and map data from 1999 onwards.

Freshness

Map version is from 2023, with metadata updated in March 2026.

Geography

Statewide marine and coastal waters of Victoria, Australia.