Temperate Southern Australia, covers more than 7 million hectares of continental shelf waters, contributes significantly to social and economic benefits, and has important cultural value to Australia's Traditional Owners.
Through a collaboration with between Traditional Owners from the Whadjuk Aboriginal Corporation on Whadjuk Country, Undalup Association and Karri Karrak Aboriginal Corporation on Wadandi Country, Binalup Aboriginal Corporation and Wagyl Kaip Aboriginal Corporation on Goreng and Minang Country, Esperance Tjaltjraak Native Title Aboriginal Corporation on Wudjari Country and the Australian Government through the National Environmental Science Programs Marine and Coastal Hub Project 2.1 we set out to create an intuitive map of seabed habitats across the continental shelf of southern Australia.
Previous attempts to map these ecosystems have focused on nearshore environments within coastal waters. Similar to practices worldwide, these mapping efforts have frequently relied on high resolution bathymetry.
In this presentation, we introduce a novel approach to represent seabed habitats on the temperate Australian continental shelf, developed only using nationally available broad scale bathymetry at 250 m resolution, ground truthed with spatially balanced horizontally facing imagery.
We are now extending our collaboration with the Yamatji Southern Regional Corporation on Yamatji Country to share these approaches.