Recent datasets

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is endemic in many countries along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF). Shorebirds are noted carriers of avian influenza [1], making them likely candidates to not only fall victim to the increasingly alarming HPAI panzootic [2, 3], but also cause incursions of the virus into Australia [4]. Understanding the current and future migratory connectivity of different Australian shorebird populations within sites along their flyway is required to better predict and mitigate disease incursion risks.

This dataset is a collection of spatial climatologies derived from the eReefs hydrodynamic and biogeochemical models for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region. It contains GeoTiff raster files representing long-term average conditions for numerous environmental variables across different depths (3m, 9m, 18m, and 39m below surface) and models (GBR4 BGC v3.1 2011 - 2018, GBR4 Hydro v2.0 2011 - 2023, and GBR1 Hydro v2.0 2015 - 2023). Each GeoTiff represents the average conditions over the set of whole years in the model time series.

This dataset consists of drone footage (DJI Mini 2) taken at the fringing reef off Pretty Beach, south of Port Douglas in Queensland at low tide (0.5 - 0.6 m LAT) on 2022-10-06. It contains 16 videos showing the reef from a broad range of angles including footage from 90 m and low footage from 6 m elevation. It also includes the raw photos to create two orthomosaics. The first corresponds to 310 photos that cover the whole reef from 90 m and the second consists of 176 photos covering a central strip of the of the reef taken from 6 m elevation.

This dataset represents a comprehensive mapping of shallow marine areas across Northern Australia and the Great Barrier Reef, encompassing intertidal zones, shallow subtidal habitats (down to approximately 5 meters depth in turbid waters), and offshore reef features visible at depths of up to 40 meters in clear waters. Derived from Sentinel-2 composite imagery, it identifies benthic areas where seafloor features are visible in the satellite imagery, providing a mask for mapping of marine habitats from Sentinel 2 imagery.

The 2020 Independent Review of the EPBC Act (the Samuel Review) states that “Decision-makers, proponents and the community do not have access to the best available data, information and science. This results in sub-optimal decision-making, inefficiency and additional cost for business, and poor transparency for the community. Immediate investment in the information supply chain is needed to support reform. We can't wait until perfect data is available.

This record provides an overview of the NESP Marine and Coastal Hub Project 'A toolkit for ranger-led seagrass monitoring in northern Australia Sea Country'. For specific data outputs from this project, please see child records associated with this metadata. Monitoring of key habitats is increasingly being led by Indigenous Ranger groups. It is important that this information, across the whole of northern Australia, is collected in a reliable and consistent manner.

This record provides an overview of the NESP Marine and Coastal Hub Project ' Innovations To Support Crown-Of-Thorns Starfish Control and the Resilience of the Great Barrier Reef'. For specific data outputs from this project, please see child records associated with this metadata. The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) faces increasing threats from climate-induced mass bleaching, cyclones, and Crown-Of-Thorns Starfish (COTS).

This record provides an overview of the NESP Marine and Coastal Hub project Mapping Sea Country and investigating conservation and restoration opportunities along the Kakadu coast and Garig Gunak Barlu National Park. For specific data outputs from this project, please see child records associated with this metadata. This project addresses the need for contemporary biodiversity and habitat data in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park (Cobourg Peninsula) and coastal Kakadu National Park, essential for effective Sea Country planning and management.

This dataset consists of shapefiles for coral atoll platforms, coral reefs, coral cays, shallow depth contours (5 m and 20 m) and names for the Coral Sea region. The primary purpose of this dataset is to support management of the Coral Sea Marine Park, academic research and the creation of maps for the region. This dataset was created by manually digitising features from composite satellite imagery (Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8/9), cross-referenced against bathymetry datasets and marine charts.

This dataset is a set of raster tidal statistics for the Australian region at a 1/32 degree resolution derived from the EOT20 global tidal model. This dataset provides rasters for Lowest Predicted Tide (LPT), Highest Predicted Tide (HPT), Mean Low Spring Water (MLSW), Mean High Spring Water (MHSW), tidal range (HPT-LPT), tidal percentiles (1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 80, 90, 95, 98, 99) and monthly climatologies (median over all simulated years for a given month) of LPT, Mean, and HPT.

The study focused on the impacts of catchment development on estuaries. Our previous NESP NAER study showed that for three rivers in the Gulf, nutrient addition to intertidal mudflat cores stimulated production and by inference, a reduction in nutrients,e.g. increased extraction of water, would negatively impact primary production. The current study expanded this further to examine additional estuaries in northern Australia, i.e.

This dataset consists of three Excel files containing multiple worksheets of data from a monitoring period starting in July 2023 and ending in April 2024, along with a set of three technical reports containing the monitoring methodology and findings generated from these datasets. The datasets capture water quality and hydrological data from a constructed wetland in Tully, within the Wet Tropics region of Queensland, Australia.

This dataset summarises subtidal benthic surveys in Yanyuwa Sea Country into 3 GIS shapefiles. (1) A point (site) shapefile describes seagrass presence/absence at 849 subtidal sites surveyed by vessel. (2) The meadow shapefile describes attributes of 46 subtidal seagrass meadows. (3) The interpolation shapefile describes variation in subtidal seagrass biomass across the seagrass meadows.

This dataset summarises benthic habitat and fish surveys in West Cape York, including the West Cape York Marine Park (Commonwealth), southern Dugong Sanctuary, Angkamuthi and Kaurareg Sea Country into 2 GIS shapefiles. (1) A point (site) shapefile showing point location of 407 habitat survey sites. (2) A point (site) shapefile showing point location of BRUV (baited remote underwater video) deployments to survey fish at 42 sites. The full report is: Carter A, Groom R, Smith T, Shepherd L, van de Wetering C and Willan R (2023).

This dataset contains the spatial analysis workflow, data derived from the spatial analysis, and R code to identify the blue carbon restoration opportunity in three case study regions in Australia: 1) Fitzroy Basin, QLD; 2) Peel-Harvey and northern part of South West Catchments, WA; and 3) Ord River, WA.

This dataset corresponds to land area polygons of Australian coastline and surrounding islands. It was generated from 10 m Sentinel 2 imagery from 2022 - 2024 using the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) to distinguish land from water. It was estimated from composite imagery made up from images where the tide is above the mean sea level. The coastline approximately corresponds to the mean high water level. This dataset was created as part of the NESP MaC 3.17 northern Australian Reef mapping project.

This dataset summarises intertidal benthic surveys of Dungeness Reef, Torres Strait in February 2021 into 3 GIS shapefiles. (1) The site shapefile describes (a) seagrass presence/absence and (b) species composition at 128 sites. (2) The meadow shapefile describes seagrass communities for the reef-top meadow. (3) The interpolation shapefile describes variation in seagrass biomass across sites in the meadow. This project is part of ongoing long-term monitoring of intertidal reef-top seagrass in Torres Strait.

This dataset consists of one data file (spreadsheet) of outcomes from a national scale survey of practitioners and researchers working in marine and coastal ecosystem restoration. For privacy reasons the data are aggregated and presented as summary data. Long form responses have been checked to ensure that respondents are not identifiable. The survey was open for response November 8th 2021 – November 29th 2021 and had 129 valid responses.

This dataset contains cloud free, low tide composite satellite images for the tropical Australia region based on 10 m resolution Sentinel 2 imagery from 2018 – 2023. This image collection was created as part of the NESP MaC 3.17 project and is intended to allow mapping of the reef features in tropical Australia. This collection contains composite imagery for 200 Sentinel 2 tiles around the tropical Australian coast. This dataset uses two styles: 1. a true colour contrast and colour enhancement style (TrueColour) using the bands B2 (blue), B3 (green), and B4 (red) 2.

This code repository and dataset details a method for determining benthic reflectance from a combination of satellite imagery and bathymetry. Its key benefit is that it can map benthic reflectance up to 50 - 60 m in depth in clear waters, when using Sentinel 2 B2 channel combined with matching bathymetry data. Benthic reflectance is a measure of how much light the seafloor reflects and is useful for distinguishing areas that are sand (high reflectance) or vegetation such as seagrass, algae and coral (low reflectance).