SDB update #1 on Australia: All shallow waters mapped

This SDB Update No. 1 on Australia is the start into EOMAP’s new post series on Satellite-Derived Bathymetry (SDB). Enjoy news, facts, and figures on a bi-weekly basis!

Australia’s coastline

Australia offers ~36,000 km with a further ~24,000 km of island coastlines. These coastal areas are fascinating, extremely manifold, and often highly dynamic. We have now completed SDB-mapping of the shallow waters “down under” in 100-m resolution. The continent is surrounded by the Pacific, the Indian, and the Southern (Antarctic) Oceans, and the shallow waters offer both challenging and ideal conditions for SDB:

High-wave areas
Rocky and sandy coasts
Coral reefs
Varied tidal ranges, including +10 m tides in the Northwest!
Clear and turbid waters
Strong sandbank dynamics, calling for frequent monitoring

SDB of Australia Great Sandy Straits for SDB update #1

a detail of the 100 m resolution bathymetry result for the area of Great Sandy Straits on the east coast of Australia

100 m dataset

For this new dataset, we applied wave kinematics bathymetry and optical SDB processing. Both workflows based on Copernicus ECMWF Sentinel-2 satellite imagery. These data not only support environmental modelling. They also contribute to international initiatives such as Seabed 2030, EMODnet Bathymetry, or GEBCO – General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans.

SDB-mapping in Australia by EOMAP goes a long way and includes some ‘firsts’:

>> In 2009, we were the first to map Ningaloo (Nyinggulu), the world’s largest fringing reef in Western Australia in very high resolution.
Read more in the paper by Halina Kobryn et al..

>> In 2013, we provided the first very high-resolution SDB covering the entire ‘unmappable’ Great Barrier Reef.
Read more in this article at deepreef.org.

>> In 2019, the Australian Hydrographic Office adopted SDB in their survey toolbox. Meanwhile, EOMAP high-resolution data have been integrated into official Australian charts and AusSeabed bathymetry grids (30 m).