Darwin & Bynoe Harbours Predictive Benthic Habitat Mapping

The goal of the program was developing comprehensive inventories and maps of the distribution and abundance of physical and biological seabed habitats, seagrasses and benthic assemblages to provide baseline environmental mapping and a description of ecological patterns. The benthic habitat mapping was performed by utilising R/Python and Maxent software within the species distribution modelling domain. We correlated the probability of occurrence of individual benthic habitat classes with the environmental predictors developed form the multibeam hydroacoustic dataset. There are five maps for the probability of occurrence of individual benthic habitat classes: Macroalgae, Seagrass, Hard Corals, Filter feeders and Bare seafloor; and a maximum likelihood map incorporating all the individual layers (1- Macroalgae; 2- Filter Feeders; 3- Seagrass; 4- Hard Corals; 5- Bare seafloor).An updated version of this data are available (2022) Revised predictive benthic habitat map for Darwin Harbour. Report prepared for Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Darwin, 127 pp. See related data link below.