The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has developed a proposal for the establishment of seven Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) located around east Antarctica for the purposes of marine ecosystem conservation. As seafloor morphology is a key component of marine ecosystems, this bathymetry compilation for the proposed MPAs was produced to support the AAD proposal. All bathymetry data available to Geoscience Australia at the time of compilation were used. This included multibeam and singlebeam acoustic data which were verified and processed to ensure the data were as accurate as possible. Processing included sound velocity corrections, navigation verification and the rejection of erroneous data points. Once processed, the data were gridded to 100m resolution and projected into suitable WGS84 UTM zones. The gridded data was exported into several formats to facilitate ease of use. The formats include xyz files, ESRI rasters, geoTIFs, CARISTM image files and soundings. The data and the technical report are available for download from URLs below.

This metadata record is a modified child record of an original parent record originating from custodians of data associated with Geoscience Australia (The identifier of the parent record is ANZCW0703009248, and can be found on the Australian Spatial Data Directory website - see the URL given below). Taken from the report: A bathymetric grid of the Heard Island-Kerguelen Plateau Region (Longitudes 68 degrees E - 80 degrees E, Latitudes 48 degrees S - 56 degrees S) is produced. In doing so, the individual datasets used have been closely examined and any deficiencies noted for further follow up or have been rectified immediately and the changes documented. These datasets include modern multibeam data, coastline data obtained from the World Vector Shoreline, echosounder data from research, fishing and Customs vessels and satellite derived bathymetric data. A hierarchical system was employed whereby the best and most extensive datasets were gridded first and applied as a mask to the next best dataset. A new masking grid would be formed from these datasets to pass non-overlapping data in the next best dataset. This procedure was employed until finally the satellite data were masked. All the various levels of masked data were then brought together by the gridding algorithm (Intrepid - Desmond Fitzgerald Associates) and an ERMapper format grid produced. A grid cell size of 0.005 degrees (nominal 500m) was used with many iterations of minimum curvature gridding and several passes of smoothing. The final grid is available in ERMapper, ArcInfo and ASCII xyz formats.

This metadata record is a modified child record of an original parent record originating from custodians of data associated with Geoscience Australia (The identifier of the parent record is ANZCW0703006701, and can be found on the Australian Spatial Data Directory website - see the URL given below). A bathymetric grid of the Macquarie Island Region (Longitudes 151 E and 167 E, Latitudes 48 S and 62 S) was produced. In doing so, the individual datasets used were closely examined and any deficiencies noted for further follow up or were rectified immediately and the changes documented. These datasets include modern multibeam data, coastline data obtained from georeferenced SPOT imagery, hydrographic quality data, echosounder data from research and fishing vessels and satellite derived bathymetric data. A hierarchical system was employed whereby the best and most extensive datasets were gridded first and applied as a mask to the next best dataset. A new masking grid would be formed from these datasets to pass non-overlapping data in the next best dataset. This procedure was employed until finally the satellite data were masked. All the various levels of masked data were then brought together by the gridding algorithm (Intrepid and Desmond Fitzgerald Associates) and an ERMapper format grid produced. A grid cell size of 0.00225 (nominal 250m) was used with many iterations of minimum curvature gridding and several passes of smoothing. The final grid is available in geotiff, ArcInfo ascii and xyz text formats. A detailed report of the work completed is also available.