Large Marine Domains of Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone

Full description

The Large Marine Domains dataset contains a set of regional marine planning units for Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone developed in collaboration with the National Oceans Office (NOO) and the CSIRO Division of Marine Research in 1998. These planning units are a key requirement for supporting Australia's Oceans Policy announced by the Commonwealth government in December 1998. The boundaries define areas surrounding continental Australia and the external territories including Cocos Keeling Islands, Christmas Island, Norfolk Island, Lord Howe Island, Macquarie Island, Heard and McDonald Islands, and the Australian Antarctic Territory. Boundaries have undergone a series of changes since their inception. See the Lineage for more details on these changes. Dataset including the boundaries of thirteen marine regions on the continental shelf of Australia, identified in the draft report 'Large Marine Domains Of Australia's Exclusive Economic Zones' (CSIRO 1998). The purpose of this study was to create a hierarchical framework of biological regionalisations at the provincial level derived largely from distributional data for endemic fish species. The previous study, 'Interim Marine and Coastal Regionalisation for Australia' (CSIRO 1996) of the shelf region (coast to the shelf-break at the 200m isobath) forms the basis of the current Large Marine Domain (LMD) regions on the shelf. The regions are designated Northern; North-eastern; Eastern-central; South-eastern; South-western; Western-central; North-western; Norfolk; Sunda; Macquarie; Kerguelen; Australian Antarctic; and South Tasman Rise. The National Oceans Office has, to a large degree adopted these Large Marine Domain boundaries to form administrative boundaries for marine mapping and planning purposes.

Lineage

Progress Code: completed

Maintenance and Update Frequency: notPlanned

Statement: CSIRO Marine Research (Hobart) delivered the original Large Marine Domains (LMD) dataset to ERIN (March 1998). The LMD boundaries were output from spatial/process modelling using inputs from the CAMRIS (CSIRO, 1993), Law of the Sea Project (AGSO, 1997), AMBIS (AUSLIG, 1995), IMCRA (EA, 1996), GTOPO 6.2 (NOAA, 1998) datasets and others. Compared with the AUSLIG coastline the LMD roughly conforms to the derived 1:10 million version held at ERIN. ERIN topologically corrected (eg. removed dangles) and re-projected the source version to be GDA compliant and was used by the National Oceans Office (NOO) in regional marine planning publications throughout 1999. Since 1999 the dataset has undergone a number of changes and subsequent versions (see below). 1. Boundary changes to South-East Region (Nov 1999): - Moved the SW boundary extending from the westernmost tip of Kangaroo Island southward so that its NW boundary strikes WSW/SW instead of SW. - Altered the South-East/South-West boundary so that the coastal intercept became coincident with the IMCRA boundary near Eden/Pambula, and continued NE until it intercepts the 200m isobath at the edge of the EEZ. 2. Removed 1:10 million scale coastal boundaries and replaced with the 1:100,000 coastline (Jan 2000). 3. Incorporated meso-scale IMCRA boundaries within the LMD boundaries for continental Australia (Jan 2000). 4. LMD boundary changes to alignment with meso-scale IMCRA boundaries (Oct 2000): - Replaced boundary between North Eastern and Central Eastern LMDs to follow W route along Tweed-Moreton, W along Tweed-Moreton/Mackay-Capricorn, then landward to the end of the Tweed-Moreton/Shoalwater Coast IMCRA boundary. - Replaced boundary between South Western and South East boundary LMDs (Oct 2000) with the boundaries between the Eyre/Coorong IMCRA regions. - Replaced boundary between South Eastern and Eastern Central LMDs (Oct 2000) with the boundaries between Twofold Shelf/Batemans Shelf IMCRA regions. - Replaced boundary betwe