Seascapes for the Entire Region Covered by the Berg-3 Survey, Including the Addition of a Biological Layer Based on the Shannon Diversity Index  

Authors / CoAuthors

Whiteway, T.

Abstract

Geoscience Australia undertakes classification of biophysical datasets to create seabed habitat maps (termed 'seascapes') for the Australian margin and adjacent sea floor. Seascapes describe a layer of ecologically meaningful biophysical properties that spatially represents potential seabed habitats. Each seascape area corresponds to a region of the seabed that contains similar biophysical properties and, by association, potential habitats and communities. The lack of available standardised biological data at the national scale precludes the integration of biological information into the derivation of national seascapes. By focusing on a much smaller scale over tens of kilometres near the Glomar Shoals in Western Australia, referred to as 'local scale', available biological data were integrated into new derivations of seascapes and results compared with seascapes without these data. Using physical data as described in Whiteway et al. 2007 (GA Record 2007/11) and demersal fish data obtained from the 1967 Russian Berg-3 survey, we have derived four new local sets of seascape to compare the effects of integrating biological data: 1) Standard seascapes using only physical data, 2) Seascapes with an additional biology layer based on the Shannon diversity index, 3) Seascapes with an additional biology layer based on the Simpson diversity index, and 4) Seascapes with an additional layer of randomly-generated data. At the 'regional-scale' we derived two sets of seascapes: 1) Seascapes with an additional biology layer based on the Shannon diversity index that encompasses the entire Berg-3 survey area in northwest Australia, and 2) Standard seascapes using only physical data for the same area. This datsets is the regional scale northwest Australian seascape produced with a biological layer called the 'Shannon Diversity Index'.

Product Type

dataset

eCat Id

69142

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Keywords

• GIS DatasetThematic

( Theme )

• GIS

( Theme )

• marine

• AU-NTAU-QLDAU-WA

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Earth Sciences

• Published_Internal

Publication Date

2009-01-01T00:00:00

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

Classification - unclassified

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

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asNeeded

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geoscientificInformation

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Benthic biophysical grids were combined using the ISOclass unsupervised classification methodology in ERMapper and ArcGIS. For a full description of the methodology and discussion of iterative results refer to reports: - Whiteway, T., Heap, A.D., Lucieer, V., Hinde, A., Ruddick, R. & Harris, P.T. (2007). Seascapes of the Australia Margin and Adjacent Sea Floor: Methodology and Results. Geoscience Australia, Record 2007/11 ISBN: 9781921236389, 133pp - Hinde, A., Whiteway, T., Ruddick, R. & Heap, A.D. (2007). Seascapes of the Australian Margin and adjacent sea floor: Keystroke Methodology. Geoscience Australia, Record 2007/10 ISBN: 978192123372, 56pp. The final input Variables used in this classification included (and were sourced from): - Bathymetry (Geoscience Australia) - %Gravel (Geoscience Australia) - %Mud (Geoscience Australia) - Primary Productivity (CSIRO) - Sea Floor Temperature (CSIRO) - Slope (Geoscience Australia) - Effective Disturbance (Geoscience Australia) - Shannon Diversity Index (measuring the diversity of dmersal fish)

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[-20.7037, -9.1337, 115.3787, 141.1687]

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