Acoustic Mapping of Estuarine Benthic Habitats: Results of a Trial in Wallis Lake, NSW

A collaborative field trial of the Quester-Tangent View Series 5 single beam acoustic benthic mapping system was recently conducted in Wallis Lake by Geoscience Australia and Quester Tangent Corporation. The survey involved acquisition of the acoustic backscatter data from the northern channels and basins of Wallis Lake. Quester-Tangent software (IMPACT v3) was used to classify acoustic echograms that returned from the lake bottom into statistically different acoustic classes, using principal components analysis. Six acoustically different substrate types were identified in the Wallis Lake survey area.


Ground-truthing was undertaken to identify the sedimentological and biological features of the lake floor that influenced the shape of the return echograms. For each sample, measurements were made of grain size, wet bulk density, total organic carbon, CaCO3 content, and mass of coarse fraction (mainly shell) material. Statistical cluster analysis and multi-dimensional scaling were utilised to identify any physical similarities between groups of ground-truthing sites. The analysis revealed four distinct and mappable substrate types in the study area.


The degree of association between acoustic classes and measured sediment parameters was also quantified. Cluster and MDS analysis revealed that, based on the parameters measured, the six acoustic classes were not uniquely linked to the sediment groups, suggesting that factors other than the sediment parameters alone are influencing the acoustic signal.


The spatial interpretation of the Wallis Lake Quester-Tangent data represents the first quantification of non-seagrass habitats in the deeper areas of the lake, and provides a useful indicatior of benthic habitat diversity and abundance. For future studies, a more quantitative measure of faunal burrow size and density, and also other sedimentary bedforms, is recommended.

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Date (Publication)
2004-01-01T00:00:00
Edition date
2002-01-01T00:00:00
Citation identifier
Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/61039

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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Publisher

Geoscience Australia

 Canberra
Author

Ryan, D.A.

 1
Author

Brooke, B.

 2
Author

Wilson, J.

 3
Author

Creasey, J.

 4
Author

Elliot, C.

 5
Author

Pearson, R.

 6
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Record

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2004/012

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EGD
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Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
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Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

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10000
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  • Geoscientific information

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Product data repository: Various Formats

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Data Store directory containing the digital product files

Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes

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  • GA Publication

  • Record

Theme

  • coasts

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  • GIS

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  • mapping

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  • water resources

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  • marine

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  • AU-NSW

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

  • Earth Sciences

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  • Published_External

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

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4.0

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License

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem

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2018-11-01T00:00:00
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https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

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Unclassified
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English
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UTF8

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Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

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Download the Record (pdf)

Download the Record (pdf)

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Non geographic dataset
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GA Publication

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem

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2018-11-01T00:00:00
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https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

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Unclassified

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urn:uuid/a05f7892-c0dd-7506-e044-00144fdd4fa6

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Language
English
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UTF8
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Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

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GA Record

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Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with

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eCatId/61039

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https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/a05f7892-c0dd-7506-e044-00144fdd4fa6

Date info (Revision)
2018-04-20T06:03:30
Date info (Creation)
2004-01-27T00:00:00

Metadata standard

Title

AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-3

Title

Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition

Version 2.0, September 2018

Citation identifier
https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551

 
 

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GIS coasts mapping marine water resources

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