A continental-scale classification of submarine canyons for the Australian margin: a first-order approach using morphometrics, shape and location  

Authors / CoAuthors

Huang, Z. | Nichol, S.

Abstract

Submarine canyons are highly energetic and dynamic environment. Owing to their abrupt and complex topographies that are contrast to the adjacent shelf and slope, they can generate intense mixing, both horizontally through internal tides and waves and vertically through upwelling and downwelling. Complex hydrodynamic processes and increased food supply in sediment and water column result in elevated primary and secondary production which would favour the development of a highly productive and temporally dynamic food web over the canyons. Consequently, many submarine canyons, especially those incise into continental shelf, are considered as biodiversity hotspots. To better understand the ecosystem functions and ecological processes of marine environment, identification and classification of submarine canyons are needed. This study developed a national-scale submarine canyon classification system for Australian ocean based on canyon's physical characteristics. A hierarchical classification scheme was proposed. At the top level, the submarine canyons were classified into shelf-incising canyons and confined-to-slope canyons. At the lower levels, the canyons were classified on their morphometry, shape and location characteristics separately. Accurate identification of submarine canyons was the critical first step for the success of the proposed canyon classification system. A national bathymetry data at a spatial resolution of 250 metres and a completed set of multibeam bathymetry data at a spatial resolution of 50 metres from all previous multibeam surveys, both published by Geoscience Australia, were used. Hill-shaded layers were generated from which most submarine canyons could be easily identified. The extents of individual canyons, from wall to wall, were manually digitised as a GIS polygon layer. The initial number of canyons was then filtered using the following criteria: - Depth of the canyon head is less than 4000 m, - Depth range between the canyon's head and foot is greater than 600 m, and - Incision of the canyon head is greater than 100 m. At the lower levels, the following metrics were calculated as the inputs to the canyon classifications: - Morphometry metrics: incision depth of the canyon head, standard deviation of the slope gradient (within all cells in a canyon), slope gradient between the canyon head and the canyon foot, and canyon overall rugosity. - Shape metrics: canyon area, number of branches, length/width ratio of the smallest bounding rectangle, border index, compactness and canyon volume. - Location metrics: depth of the canyon head, depth range between the canyon's head and foot, canyon density, distance to coast, distance to the shelf break, incision depth (shelf-incising canyons only), and incision area (shelf-incising canyons only). The hierarchal agglomerative clustering technique was used for the unsupervised classifications. After the filtering, a total of 708 submarine canyons were identified for the entire Australian EEZ. Among these 708 canyons, 134 of them incise into continental shelf; the rest are confined in continental slope. For the shelf-incising canyons, the morphometry, shape and location based classifications all resulted in three classes. Combining the three lower level classifications yielded 15 classes. For the slope-confined canyons, the morphometry, shape and location based classifications resulted in three, four and four classes, respectively. Combining the three lower level classifications yielded 37 classes. GeoHab 2013

Product Type

nonGeographicDataset

eCat Id

75388

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Keywords

• External PublicationAbstract

( Theme )

• geology

( Theme )

• marine

( Theme )

• NERP

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Marine Geoscience

• Published_Internal

Publication Date

2013-01-01T00:00:00

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

Classification - unclassified

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

Access - restricted

Use - license

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Purpose

Maintenance Information

notPlanned

Topic Category

oceans

Series Information

3

Lineage

The abstract was based on the results of national canyon classification study, a key task of NERP Marine Biodiversity Hub theme3 project 1.

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Spatial Resolution

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GeoHab 2013