Recent datasets

This record provides an overview of the NESP Marine and Coastal Hub small-scale study - "Coastal wetland restoration for Blue Carbon in northern Australia". For specific data outputs from this project, please see child records associated with this metadata. Investment in restoration of coastal wetland ecosystems is increasing due to concerns around habitat loss, water quality, decline in fish catches, coastal inundation and erosion, and climate change.

This data collection is the common entry point for the intertidal and subtidal benthic seagrass survey datasets of Torres Strait produced by the Centre for Tropical Water & Aquatic Ecosystem Research (TropWATER), James Cook University. For almost two decades the TropWATER Seagrass Group, in collaboration with the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) Land and Sea Management Unit (LSMU), has mapped and monitored the seagrass meadows of Torres Strait, revisiting one or more regions each year.

This dataset summarises benthic surveys of Western Torres, Torres Strait in December 2020 into 3 GIS shapefiles: (1) The site shapefile describes (a) seagrass presence/absence, (b) species composition, (c) algae cover and (d) benthic macro-invertebrate cover at 542 sites. (2) The meadow shapefile describes subtidal seagrass communities. (3) The interpolation shapefile describes variation in subtidal seagrass biomass across the survey area.

This dataset summarises intertidal benthic surveys of the Eastern Cluster, Torres Strait, in September 2020 into 3 GIS shapefiles. (1) The site shapefile describes (a) seagrass presence/absence, (b) species composition, (c) algae cover and (d) benthic macro-invertebrate cover at 798 sites. (2) The meadow shapefile describes seagrass communities for the intertidal meadows. (3) The interpolation shapefile describes variation in seagrass biomass across sites for the intertidal meadows.

The data set comprises 4 spreadsheets containing trace metal concentrations measured in waters benthic, suspended sediments and seagrasses collected across the Torres Strait during the NESP TWQ 5.14 project. Details of the sampling locations (including coordinates), general chemical and physical parameters and laboratory quality control data are provided. The seagrass data set is also supported by historical data from previous studies: Dight, I.J., Gladstone, W. (1993). Torres Strait baseline study: pilot study final report June 1993.

This dataset is a compilation of available ocean temperature data, aerial and in-water bleaching observations during the 2016 and 2017 bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef in order to estimate the total reef area impacted by coral bleaching and thermal heat stress. A total of 982 reefs (56.8% reef area of the GBR) were surveyed in 2016 and 781 reefs (50.9% reef area of the GBR) surveyed in 2017. This analysis provides an improved understanding of the variability and the increase in spatial impacts from coral bleaching throughout the GBR in a warming ocean.

This collection of temperature logger data has been produced to cover the most recent back to back bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef to be used as a reference data set for coral bleaching studies. The data comes from over 90 permanent temperature logger locations within the reef from the AIMS temperature logger program, 12 AIMS automatic weather stations, 6 AIMS-IMOS mooring sites and 15 Queensland Environment wave-buoys temperature loggers. The data were restricted from late 2015 to mid-2017.

The dataset consists of multiple data files from four types of instruments to visualize current, temperature flow patterns and coral stress responses around the north west section of Moore Reef including a reef pass, taken during 2018-2021. These include 19 temperature and 12 current loggers and 69 CTD casts, along with fluorometry measurements of 33 tagged coral colonies. This dataset also includes photos of the tagged corals along with CoralWatch colour cards during a 5-week period from Nov-Dec 2020.

This dataset contains the code for the Android application “COTS Control Centre Decision Support Tool” (CCC-DST). The CCC-DST is one part of the “COTS Control Centre Decision Support System” (CCC-DSS) which is a hardware and software solution, comprising 32 Samsung Galaxy Tab Active2 tablets. The tablets run a kiosk operating system and provide three data collection apps, developed for GBRMPA by ThinkSpatial, and three decision support components developed by CSIRO as part of the NESP COTS IPM Research Program.

This dataset contains processed satellite imageries of the Gulf of Papua - Torres Strait (GP-TS) region. It includes: - 12-year (mid 2008-mid 2019) of daily MODIS water type images (Wet season colour scale), and summaries (seasonal, annual, long term, difference composite maps) - 1 year (2019) of weekly Sentinel-3 water type images (Forel-Ule colour scale) null This dataset is currently under embargo until 31/01/2022.

This dataset collected variation in the demography of Pacific crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster cf. solaris) during the latest period of elevated starfish densities (active population irruptions) in the central section of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

This dataset consists of a small CSV file containing the locations, names and country of the Torres Strait villages associated with the Australian and Papua New Guinea Treaty Protected Zone and neighbouring PNG Treaty villages This dataset is intended for the creation of regional maps. The village locations are not official and were based using satellite imagery to place the village marker on either the centre of the visible village, or the post office location, if that was marked in Google Maps.

This dataset contains maps of alluvial and hillslope gullies across four large blocks of lidar covering portions of the Burdekin, Fitzroy, and Normanby Catchments. The gully polygons were generated using methods developed in the NESP 5.10 project for the extraction of gullies from lidar. Lidar is detailed topographic data collected from aircraft using an airborne laser scanning system. A significant component of the cause of declining water quality and the health of the GBR is increased land based erosion leading to sediment pollution within the rivers draining into the GBR lagoon.

This dataset contains the results of the real-time water quality monitoring program (RTWQM) conducted across the Russell-Mulgrave catchment (south of Cairns) for "Project 25". Project 25 spanned two (2) NESP TWQ projects: 2.1.7 (2016 - 2018) and 4.8 (2019 - 2020), with the dataset for Project 4.8 also containing the data for Project 2.1.7. Data is the result of 2-3 hourly in situ logging of stream height (in metres) and nitrate concentrations (mg/L). This dataset is under an embargo period for 18 months from the completion of the project extension (NESP TWQ 4.8).

This dataset is the genome assembly of the staghorn coral Acropora millepora. Tissue samples were collected along the Central Great Barrier Reef during the 2017 mass bleaching event. Tissue was collected from a range of individual exhibiting both bleaching and non-bleaching phenotypes. A range of phenotypic analysis were conducted and linked to the genomic sequencing data provided here. The A.millepora genome (Scaffold N50 =1.23 Mb) draft assembly was constructed from a combination of PacBio and Illumina paired-end reads with 10X Genomics barcodes.

This data set contains high frequency logging data to measure water depth, water temperature and electrical conductivity in project wetland sites. Coastal wetlands adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have incredible environmental, cultural and economic value. Despite this, many floodplains in the GBR catchments have been modified, impacted or lost entirely because of continuing land use change (such as agricultural, aquaculture, peri-urban/urban, and industrial expansion).

The last stream within the NESP 5.5 project was related to the conduct of an online survey to get aesthetic ratings of additional 3500 images downloaded from Flickr to improve the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based system recognising and assessing the beauty of natural scenes, which had been developed in the previous NESP 3.2.3 project. Despite some earlier investment into this research area, there is still a need to improve the tools we use to measure the aesthetic beauty of marine landscapes.

Organizing focus groups was used as an effective qualitative research method to examine collective opinions of participants on a specific topic. Within NESP 5.5 project, focus groups consist of an exploratory study to explore the psychological antecedents of human aesthetic assessment of underwater sceneries at the GBR among three groups of different cultural backgrounds: Chinese, non-indigenous Australians and First People Australians. Focus group folder contains one dataset report, and three folders (Australian, Chinese, First People) with seven images.

The second stream within the NESP 5.5 project was conducted using eye-tracking technology to examine possible differences between three participant groups in evaluating the aesthetic beauty of GBR underwater sceneries. This research continue the efforts initiated in the previous NESP 3.2.3 project to explore the power of eye-tracking as an objective measure of human aesthetic assessment of GBR underwater sceneries.

This data set provides detailed information about the chemical composition, bioavailability and relative abundance of organic compounds in plant material and the organic associated with soil and sediment samples collected from terrestrial and marine environment of the Great Barrier Reef. *This dataset is currently under embargo.