Towards a regional high-resolution bathymetry of the North West Shelf of Australia based on Sentinel-2 satellite images, 3D seismic surveys, and historical datasets

[摘要] High-resolution bathymetry forms critical datasets for marine geoscientists.It can be used to characterize the seafloor and its marine habitats, tounderstand past sedimentary records, and even to support the development ofoffshore engineering projects. Most methods to acquire bathymetry data arecostly and can only be practically deployed in relatively small areas. It istherefore critical to develop cost-effective and advanced techniques toproduce regional-scale bathymetry datasets. This paper presents an integrated workflow that builds on satellites imagesand 3D seismic surveys, integrated with historical depth soundings, togenerate regional high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs). Themethod was applied to the southern half of Australia's North West Shelf andled to the creation of new high-resolution bathymetry grids, with aresolution of 10  ×  10 m in nearshore areas and 30  ×  30 m elsewhere. The vertical and spatial accuracy of the datasets have been assessed usingopen-source Laser Airborne Depth Sounder (LADS) and multibeam echosounder(MBES) surveys as a reference. The comparison of the datasets indicates thatthe seismic-derived bathymetry has a vertical accuracy better than 1 m  +  2 % of the absolute water depth, while the satellite-derived bathymetryhas a depth accuracy better than 1 m  +  5 % of the absolute water depth.This 30  ×  30 m dataset constitutes a significant improvement of thepre-existing regional 250  ×  250 m grid and will support the onset ofresearch projects on coastal morphologies, marine habitats, archaeology, andsedimentology. All source datasets are publicly available, and the methods are fullyintegrated into Python scripts, making them readily applicable elsewhere inAustralia and around the world. The regional digital elevation model and theunderlying datasets can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.26186/144600 (Lebrec et al., 2021).

[学科分类] 眼科学