This resource contains bathymetry and backscatter data for the Oceanic Shoals Commonwealth Marine Reserve (CMR) in the Timor Sea collected by Geoscience Australia during September and October 2012 on RV Solander (survey GA0339/SOL5650). The survey used a Kongsberg EM3002 300 kHz multibeam sonar system mounted in single head configuration to map four areas, covering a combined area of 507 square kilometres. Data are gridded to 2 m spatial resolution. The Oceanic Shoals Commonwealth Marine Reserve survey was undertaken as an activity within the Australian Government's National Environmental Research Program Marine Biodiversity Hub and was the key component of Research Theme 4 - Regional Biodiversity Discovery to Support Marine Bioregional Plans. Hub partners involved in the survey included the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Geoscience Australia, the University of Western Australia, Museum Victoria and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. Data acquired during the survey included: multibeam sonar bathymetry and acoustic backscatter; sub-bottom acoustic profiles; physical samples of seabed sediments, infauna and epibenthic biota; towed underwater video and still camera observations of seabed habitats; baited video observations of demersal and pelagic fish, and; oceanographic measurements of the water column from CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) casts and from deployment of sea surface drifters. Further information on the survey is available in the post-survey report published as Geoscience Australia Record 2013/38 (Nichol et al. 2013).

Geoscience Australia has completed a re-development of Sentinel, from the infrastructure that supports the system through to the spatial technology and user-interface. These changes will allow Geoscience Australia to more easily integrate data from different platforms and sources as well as provide additional products through the Sentinel interface. The new Sentinel system was developed in consultation with stakeholders to ensure a close alignment between end-users needs and the services provided by Sentinel. This paper presents the key features of the new Sentinel.

Monitoring is a regulatory requirement for all carbon dioxide capture and geological storage (CCS) projects to verify containment of injected carbon dioxide (CO2) within a licensed geological storage complex. Carbon markets require CO2 storage to be verified. The public wants assurances CCS projects will not cause any harm to themselves, the environment or other natural resources. In the unlikely event that CO2 leaks from a storage complex, and into groundwater, to the surface, atmosphere or ocean, then monitoring methods will be required to locate, assess and quantify the leak, and to inform the community about the risks and impacts on health, safety and the environment. This paper considers strategies to improve the efficiency of monitoring the large surface area overlying onshore storage complexes. We provide a synthesis of findings from monitoring for CO2 leakage at geological storage sites both natural and engineered, and from monitoring controlled releases of CO2 at four shallow release facilities - ZERT (USA), Ginninderra (Australia), Ressacada (Brazil) and CO2 field lab (Norway).

Geoscience Australia undertook a marine survey of the Vlaming Sub-basin in March and April 2012 to provide seabed and shallow geological information to support an assessment of the CO2 storage potential of this sedimentary basin. The survey was undertaken under the Australian Government's National CO2 Infrastructure Plan (NCIP) to help identify sites suitable for the long term storage of CO2 within reasonable distances of major sources of CO2 emissions. The Vlaming Sub-basin is located offshore from Perth, Western Australia, and was previously identified by the Carbon Storage Taskforce (2009) as potentially highly suitable for CO2 storage. The principal aim of the Vlaming Sub-basin marine survey (GA survey number GA334) was to look for evidence of any past or current gas or fluid seepage at the seabed, and to determine whether these features are related to structures (e.g. faults) in the Vlaming Sub-basin that may extend up to the seabed. The survey also mapped seabed habitats and biota in the areas of interest to provide information on communities and biophysical features that may be associated with seepage. This research addresses key questions on the potential for containment of CO2 in the Early Cretaceous Gage Sandstone (the basin's proposed CO2 storage unit) and the regional integrity of the South Perth Shale (the seal unit that overlies the Gage Sandstone). This dataset comprises sidescan grids.

The dry-tropics of central Queensland has an annual bushfire threat season that generally extends from September to November. Fire weather hazard is quantified using either the Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) or the Grassland Fire Danger Index (GFDI) (Luke and McArthur, 1978). Weather observations (temperature, relative humidity and wind speed) are combined with an estimate of the fuel state to predict likely fire behaviour if an ignition eventuates. A high resolution numerical weather model (dynamic downscaling) was utilised to provide spatial texture over the Rockhampton region for a range of historical days where bushfire hazard (as measured at the Rockhampton Airport meteorological station) was known to be severe to extreme. From the temperature, relative humidity and wind speeds generated by the model, the maximum FFDI for each simulated day was calculated using a maximum drought factor. Each of these FFDI maps was then normalised to the value of the FFDI at the grid point corresponding to Rockhampton Airport (ensemble produced). The annual recurrance interval (ARI) of FFDI at Rockhampton Airport for the current climate was calculated from observations by fitting Generalised Extreme Value (GEV) distributions. For future climate, we considered three downscaled General Circulation Models (GCM's) forced by the A2 emission scenario for atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. The spatial pattern of the 50 and 100 year ARI fire danger rating for the Rockhampton region (current and future climate) was determined. In general, a small spatial increase in the fire danger rating is reflected in the ensemble model average for the 2090 climate. This is reflected throughout the Rockhampton region in both magnitude and extent through 2050 to 2090. Cluster areas of higher (future climate) bushfire hazard were mapped for planning applications. Handbook MODSIM2013 Conference

Geoscience Australia undertook a marine survey of the Leveque Shelf (survey number (GA-0340/SOL5754), a sub-basin of the Browse Basin, in May 2013. This survey provides seabed and shallow geological information to support an assessment of the CO2 storage potential of the Browse sedimentary basin. The basin, located on the Northwest Shelf, Western Australia, was previously identified by the Carbon Storage Taskforce (2009) as potentially suitable for CO2 storage. The survey was undertaken under the Australian Government's National CO2 Infrastructure Plan (NCIP) to help identify sites suitable for the long term storage of CO2 within reasonable distances of major sources of CO2 emissions. The principal aim of the Leveque Shelf marine survey was to look for evidence of any past or current gas or fluid seepage at the seabed, and to determine whether these features are related to structures (e.g. faults) in the Leveque Shelf area that may extend to the seabed. The survey also mapped seabed habitats and biota to provide information on communities and biophysical features that may be associated with seepage. This research, combined with deeper geological studies undertaken concurrently, addresses key questions on the potential for containment of CO2 in the basin's proposed CO2 storage unit, i.e. the basal sedimentary section (Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous), and the regional integrity of the Jamieson Formation (the seal unit overlying the main reservoir).

This resource contains bathymetry and backscatter data for the Oceanic Shoals Commonwealth Marine Reserve (CMR) in the Timor Sea collected by Geoscience Australia during September and October 2012 on RV Solander (survey GA0339/SOL5650). The survey used a Kongsberg EM3002 300 kHz multibeam sonar system mounted in single head configuration to map four areas, covering a combined area of 507 square kilometres. Data are gridded to 2 m spatial resolution. The Oceanic Shoals Commonwealth Marine Reserve survey was undertaken as an activity within the Australian Government's National Environmental Research Program Marine Biodiversity Hub and was the key component of Research Theme 4 - Regional Biodiversity Discovery to Support Marine Bioregional Plans. Hub partners involved in the survey included the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Geoscience Australia, the University of Western Australia, Museum Victoria and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. Data acquired during the survey included: multibeam sonar bathymetry and acoustic backscatter; sub-bottom acoustic profiles; physical samples of seabed sediments, infauna and epibenthic biota; towed underwater video and still camera observations of seabed habitats; baited video observations of demersal and pelagic fish, and; oceanographic measurements of the water column from CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) casts and from deployment of sea surface drifters. Further information on the survey is available in the post-survey report published as Geoscience Australia Record 2013/38 (Nichol et al. 2013).<p><p>This dataset is not to be used for navigational purposes.

Abstract: Land Surface Temperature (Ts) is an important boundary condition in many land surface modelling schemes. It is also important in other application areas such as, hydrology, urban environmental monitoring, agriculture, ecological and bushfire monitoring. Many studies have shown that it is possible to retrieve Ts on a global scale using thermal infrared data from satellites. Development of standard methodologies that generate Ts products routinely would be of broad benefit to the application of remote sensing data in areas such as hydrology and urban monitoring. AVHRR and MODIS datasets are routinely used to deliver Ts products. However, these data have 1km spatial resolution, which is too coarse to detect the detailed variation of land surface change of concern in many applications, especially in heterogeneous areas. Higher resolution thermal data from Landsat is a possible option in such cases. To derive Ts, two scientific problems need to be resolved: to remove the atmospheric effects and derive surface brightness temperature (TB) and to separate the emissivity and Ts effects in the surface brightness temperature (TB). To derive TB, for single thermal band sensors such as, Landsat 5, 7 and (due to a faulty dual-band thermal instrument) on Landsat-8, the split window methods, such as those used for NOAAAVHRR data (Becker & Li, 1990), and the day/night pairs of thermal infrared data in several bands, as used for MODIS (Wan et al., 2002) are not available for correcting atmospheric effects. The retrieval of surface brightness temperature TB from Landsat data therefore needs more care, as the accuracy of the TB retrieval depends critically on the ancillary data, such as atmospheric water vapour data (precipitable water). In this paper, a feasible operational method to remove the atmospheric effects and retrieve surface brightness temperature from Landsat data is presented. The method uses the MODTRAN 5 radiative transfer model and global atmospheric profile data sets, such as NASA MERRA (The Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications) atmospheric profiles, NOAA NCEP (National Center for Environmental Prediction) reanalysis product and ECMWF (The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) to correct for the atmospheric effects. The results derived from the global atmospheric profiles are assessed against the TB product estimated by using (accurate) ground based radiosonde data (balloon data). The results from this study have found: The global data sets NCEP1, NCEP2, MERRA and ECMWF can all generally give satisfactory TB products and can meet the levels of accuracy demanded by many practitioners, such as 1º K. Among global data sets, ECMWF data set performs best. The root mean square difference (RMSD) for the 9 days and 3 test sites are all within 0.4º K when compared with the TB products estimated using ground radiosonde measurements.

<p>This resource contains multibeam bathymetry data for Bynoe Harbour collected by Geoscience Australia (GA), the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and the Northern Territory Government (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) during the period between 3 and 27 May 2016 on the RV Solander (survey SOL6432/GA04452). This project was made possible through offset funds provided by INPEX-led Ichthys LNG Project to Northern Territory Government Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and co-investment from Geoscience Australia and Australian Institute of Marine Science. The intent of this four year (2014-2018) program is to improve knowledge of the marine environments in the Darwin and Bynoe Harbour regions by collating and collecting baseline data that enable the creation of thematic habitat maps that underpin marine resource management decisions. <p>The specific objectives of the survey were to: <p>1. Obtain high resolution geophysical (bathymetry) data for Bynoe Harbour; <p>2. Characterise substrates (acoustic backscatter properties, grainsize, sediment chemistry) for Bynoe Harbour; and <p>3. Collect tidal data for the survey area. Data acquired during the survey included: multibeam sonar bathymetry and acoustic backscatter; physical samples of seabed sediments, underwater photography and video of grab sample locations and oceanographic information including tidal data and sound velocity profiles. <p>This dataset comprises multibeam bathymetry data. A detailed account of the survey is provided in: Siwabessy, P.J.W., Smit, N., Atkinson, I., Dando, N., Harries, S., Howard, F.J.F., Li, J., Nicholas W.A., Picard, K., Radke, L.C., Tran, M., Williams, D. and Whiteway, T. 2016. Bynoe Harbour Marine Survey 2016: GA4452/SOL6432 – Post-survey report. Record 2017/04. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/Record.2017.004.

Geoscience Australia undertook a marine survey of the Vlaming Sub-basin in March and April 2012 to provide seabed and shallow geological information to support an assessment of the CO2 storage potential of this sedimentary basin. The survey was undertaken under the Australian Government's National CO2 Infrastructure Plan (NCIP) to help identify sites suitable for the long term storage of CO2 within reasonable distances of major sources of CO2 emissions. The Vlaming Sub-basin is located offshore from Perth, Western Australia, and was previously identified by the Carbon Storage Taskforce (2009) as potentially highly suitable for CO2 storage. The principal aim of the Vlaming Sub-basin marine survey (GA survey number GA334) was to look for evidence of any past or current gas or fluid seepage at the seabed, and to determine whether these features are related to structures (e.g. faults) in the Vlaming Sub-basin that may extend up to the seabed. The survey also mapped seabed habitats and biota in the areas of interest to provide information on communities and biophysical features that may be associated with seepage. This research addresses key questions on the potential for containment of CO2 in the Early Cretaceous Gage Sandstone (the basin's proposed CO2 storage unit) and the regional integrity of the South Perth Shale (the seal unit that overlies the Gage Sandstone). This dataset comprises high resolution backscatter grids.