Australia's network of Commonwealth Marine Reserves

Brief description

Consistent with the Australian Government's commitment to develop a National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), networks of Commonwealth Marine Reserves have been proclaimed for Commonwealth waters across the South-west, North-west, North, Coral Sea and Temperate East Marine Regions. These networks build on previous Marine Protected Area proclamations, including the South-east network declared in 2007.\
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This dataset is released under Creative Commons by Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Australia (CC BY-NC 3.0).\
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IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR MARINE USERS\
Transitional arrangements apply to the South-west, North-west, North and Temperate East Networks and the Coral Sea reserve, until management plans come into effect. These arrangements involve NO CHANGES ON THE WATER for marine users. Note, there are no changes to management arrangements in the marine reserves that existed prior to the establishment of the new reserves, that is, the same restrictions on activities will continue to apply even where those reserves have been incorporated into new reserves. The South-east Network of Commonwealth Marine Reserves is managed under the South-east Commonwealth Marine Reserves Network Management Plan 2013-23, in place from 1 July 2013. More information is available at www.environment.gov.au/marinereserves \
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This data contains spatial and contextual information about Commonwealth Marine Reserves under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth governments Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, which are managed by the Australian Government Department of the Environment. It does not include data on MPA's in other Australian jurisdictions (e.g. the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, State/Territory parks), or Terrestrial Protected Areas with marine components (eg Pulu Keeling National Park).

Lineage

Maintenance and Update Frequency: asNeeded

Statement: Australia's network of Commonwealth Marine Reserves have been created in accordance with the Australian Government's 'Goals and Principles for the Establishment of the National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas in Commonwealth Waters'. Boundaries of the areas are based on analysis done by the Department of the Environment of key environmental and socio-economic data.\
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The lines that make up the reserve boundaries were created/sourced from:\
- parallels and meridians were generated in ArcGIS and then densified to 0.05 decimal degrees (approx. 5km) prior to incorporation with other linework. \
- intermediate points along geodesic lines (note that, geodesic lines are the shortest line between points, they are not lines of constant bearing) were generated. A maximum segment length of 5km was used, which for this data ensures geodesic lines are within 1 metre of their true position.\
- maritime boundaries were sourced from AMB 2006 v2.0 (Geoscience Australia).\
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For each MPA, appropriate linework was generated/selected and then intersected to form polygons.

Notes

Credit
Australia's network of Commonwealth Marine Reserves. © Commonwealth of Australia, Australian Government Department of the Environment, 2014