<div>The A1 poster incorporates 4 images of Australia taken from space by Earth observing satellites. The accompanying text briefly introduces sensors and the bands within the electromagnetic spectrum. The images include examples of both true and false colour and the diverse range of applications of satellite images such as tracking visible changes to the Earth’s surface like crop growth, bushfires, coastal changes and floods. Scientists, land and emergency managers use satellite images to analyse vegetation, surface water or human activities as well as evaluate natural&nbsp;hazards.</div>

This dataset maps the geomorphic habitat environments (facies) for 36 South Australian coastal waterways. The classification system contains 12 easily identifiable and representative environments: Barrier/back-barrier, Bedrock, Central Basin, Channel, Coral, Flood- and Ebb-tide Delta, Fluvial (bay-head) Delta, Intertidal Flats, Mangrove, Rocky Reef, Saltmarsh/Saltflat, Tidal Sand Banks (and Unassigned). These types represent habitats found across all coastal systems in Australia. Most of the 36 coastal waterways have a "Modified" environmental condition (as opposed to "Near Pristine"), according to the National Land and Water Resources Audit definition.

Note that this Record has now been published as Record 2014/050, GeoCat number 78802

Diatom assemblages in sandy deposits of the 2004 tsunami at Phra Thong Island, Thailand may provide clues to flow conditions during the tsunami. The tsunami deposits contain one or more beds that fine upward, commonly from medium sand to silty very fine sand. Diatom assemblages of the lowermost portion of the deposit predominantly comprise of unbroken beach and subtidal species that live attached to sand grains. The dominant taxa shift to marine plankton species in the middle of the bed and to a mix of freshwater, brackish, and marine species near the top. These trends are consistent with expected changes in current velocities of tsunami through time. During high current velocities, medium sand is deposited; only beach and subtidal benthic diatoms attached to sediment can be incorporated into the tsunami deposit. High shear velocity keeps finer material, including planktonic diatoms in suspension. With decreasing current velocities, finer material including marine plankton can be deposited. Finally, during the lull between tsunami waves, the entrained freshwater, brackish, and marine species settle out with mud and plant trash. Low numbers of broken diatoms in the lower medium sand implies rapid entrainment and deposition, whilst selective breakage of marine plankton (Thalassionema nitzschioides, and Thalassiosira and Coscinodiscus spp.) in the middle portion of the deposit probably results from abrasion in the turbulent current before deposition.

Legacy product - no abstract available

To be completed

Monitoring changes in the spatial distribution and health of biotic habitats requires spatially extensive surveys repeated through time. Although a number of habitat distribution mapping methods have been successful in clear, shallow-water coastal environments (e.g. aerial photography and Landsat imagery) and deeper (e.g. multibeam and sidescan sonar) marine environments, these methods fail in highly turbid and shallow environments such as many estuarine ecosystems. To map, model and predict key biotic habitats (seagrasses, green and red macroalgae, polychaete mounds [Ficopamatus enigmaticus] and mussel clumps [Mytilus edulis]) across a range of open and closed estuarine systems on the south-west coast of Western Australia, we integrated post-processed underwater video data with interpolated physical and spatial variables using Random Forest models. Predictive models and associated standard deviation maps were developed from fine-scale habitat cover data. Models performed well for spatial predictions of benthic habitats, with 79-90% of variation explained by depth, latitude, longitude and water quality parameters. The results of this study refine existing baseline maps of estuarine habitats and highlight the importance of biophysical processes driving plant and invertebrate species distribution within estuarine ecosystems. This study also shows that machine-learning techniques, now commonly used in terrestrial systems, also have important applications in coastal marine ecosystems. When applied to video data, these techniques provide a valuable approach to mapping and managing ecosystems that are too turbid for optical methods or too shallow for acoustic methods.

No abstract available

The historical record reveals that at least five tsunamis have impacted the Western Australian coast (1993, 1977, 1994, 2004, 2006). We document the geomorphic effects of these tsunamis through field investigations, analysis of pre and post-tsunami satellite imagery, collation of historical reports and recording of eyewitness accounts. The tsunamis had flow depths of less than 3 m, inundation distances of up to several hundred metres and a maximum recorded run-up height of 8 m a.s.l. Geomorphic effects include off-shore and near-shore erosion and extensive vegetation damage. In some cases, vegetated foredunes were severely depleted or completely removed. Gullies and scour pockets up to 1.5 m deep were eroded into topographic highs during tsunami outflow. Eroded sediments were redeposited landward as sediment sheets several centimetres thick. Isolated coral blocks and oyster-encrusted boulders were deposited over coastal dunes. However, boulder ridges were often unaffected by tsunami flow. The extent of inundation from the most recent tsunamis can be distinguished as strandlines of coral rubble and rafted vegetation. It is likely taht these features are ephemeral and seasonal coastal processes will obscure all traces of these signatures within years to decades. Recently reported evidence for Holocene palaeotsunamis on the Western Australian coast suggests significantly larger run-up and inundation than observed in the historical record. The evidence includes signatures such as chevrons dunes that have not been observed to form during historical events. We have compared the geomorphic effects of historical tsunami with reported palaeotsunami evidence from Coral Bay, Cape Range Peninsula and Port Samson. We conclude that much of the postulated palaeotsunami evidence can be explained by more common and ongoing geomorphic processes such as reef evolution, aeolian dune development and archaeological site formation.

The variability in the inherent optical properties along an estuary-coast-ocean continuum in tropical Australia has been studied. The study area, the Fitzroy Estuary and Keppel Bay system, is a shallow coastal environment (depth < 30 m) with highly turbid waters in the estuary and blue oceanic waters in the bay and subject to macrotides. Biogeochemical and inherent optical properties (IOPs) were sampled in the near-surface layer spatially and across the tidal phase during the dry season. These determinations included continuous measurements of spectral absorption, scattering and backscattering coefficients, together with discrete measurements of spectral absorption coefficients of phytoplankton, nonalgal particles and colored dissolved organic matter, and concentrations of phytoplankton pigments and suspended matter. Because of a large variability in the characteristics of the water components on short spatial and temporal scales, we observe a large variability in the associated optical properties. From the estuary to the bay, particle scattering and dissolved absorption decreased by 2 orders of magnitude, and nonalgal particle absorption decreased by 3 orders of magnitude. We also observed a strong variability in particle single scattering albedo and backscattering efficiency (by a factor of 6) and in specific IOPs (IOPs normalized by the relevant constituent concentration) such as suspended matter-specific particle scattering and chlorophyll-specific phytoplankton absorption. Superimposed on this strong spatial variability is the effect of the semidiurnal tide, which affects the spatial distribution of all measured properties. These results emphasize the need for spatially and temporally adjusted algorithms for remote sensing in complex coastal systems.