Scott L Nichol

Geoscience Australia · Environmental Geosciences Division

The National Marine Science Committee (NMSC) established a working group to provide advice on establishing and supporting a national program. This report provides the working group’s advice and recommendations for establishing and supporting a national program. A national approach to the systematic collection and reporting of priority marine baseli...

This report is one in a series of eco-narrative documents that synthesise our existing knowledge of Australian Marine Parks. These are intended to enable managers and researchers to ascertain the physical and ecological characteristics of each park, and to highlight knowledge gaps for future research focus. The information in this eco-narrative for...

This report presents preliminary results of a collaborative seabed mapping and baseline environmental survey (GA4848) of Elizabeth and Middleton Reefs, located within the Lord Howe Marine Park (Temperate East Network). Data acquisition was undertaken in February 2020 by Geoscience Australia, the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (Universit...

This report is one in a series of eco-narrative documents that synthesise our existing knowledge of Australia’s individual Marine Parks. This series is a product of the National Environmental Science Program Marine Biodiversity Hub Project D1, which seeks to collate, synthesise and visualise biophysical data within the parks. These documents are in...

Description ABSTRACT This dataset provides spatially continuous predictions of seabed %mud (< 63 µm), %sand (63-2000 µm) and %gravel (>2000 µm) content for eight survey areas in the Timor Sea region of the Australian continental EEZ. Data are presented in 10 m resolution raster grids format and ascii text file. Predictions are based on 195 samples...

A suite of field manuals was released by the NESP Marine Hub in early 2018 to facilitate a national monitoring framework, with a focus on seven marine sampling platforms: multibeam sonar, autonomous underwater vehicles, baited remote underwater video (pelagic and demersal), towed imagery, sleds and trawls, and grabs and box corers. These platforms...

The broad continental shelf offshore northern Australia is characterised by extensive carbonate banks, terraces and pinnacles that provide potential habitats for sponge communities. Previous research in the region has established a baseline environmental inventory of these communities for these seabed features at the local scale and explored multiv...

Sediment properties are known to influence acoustic backscatter intensity. This sediment-acoustic relationship has been investigated previously through using physical geoacoustic models and empirical methods and found to be complex and nonlinear. Here we employ a robust machine-learning statistical model (random forest decision tree) to investigate...

Some of the highest density pockmark fields in the world have been observed on the northwest Australian continental shelf (>700/km2) where they occur in muddy, organic-rich sediment around carbonate banks and paleochannels. Here we developed a semi-automated method to map and quantify the form and density of these pockmark fields (~220,000 pockmark...

Australia has one of the world’s largest marine estates that includes many vulnerable habitats and a high biodiversity, with many endemic species crossing a wide latitudinal range. The marine estate is used by a variety of industries including fishing, oil & gas, and shipping, in addition to traditional, cultural, scientific and recreational uses....

Following the establishment of the world’s largest network of marine protected areas, Australia is now tasked with implementing national plans to manage a huge range of marine environments, from tropical to sub-Antarctic climates and shallow reef to abyssal depths. Monitoring (i.e. condition assessment and trend detection) is one of the key objecti...

Following the establishment of the world’s largest network of marine protected areas, Australia is now tasked with implementing national plans to manage a huge range of marine environments, from tropical to sub-Antarctic climates and shallow reef to abyssal depths. Monitoring (i.e. condition assessment and trend detection) is one of the key objecti...

Lord Howe Island and Balls Pyramid are located approximately 600 km offshore of the southeastern Australian mainland, in the subtropical waters of the northern Tasman Sea. Lord Howe Island hosts the most southern coral reef in the Pacific Ocean, and the shelves surrounding both islands feature fossil coral reefs. This study creates a seamless, high...

Northern Australia has been the focus of recent marine biodiversity research to support natural resource management for both industry and conservation, including management of the Oceanic Shoals Australian Marine Park (AMP). Much of this research has targeted habitat-forming sessile invertebrates and charismatic megafauna, but smaller macrofauna an...

The report provides an updated description of reef-affiliated seabed biota in many of the Australian Marine Parks (AMPs) within the Temperate east, South-east and South-west marine planning regions. The report also presents the mapping coverage of all AMPs by Lucieer et al. (2016).

Abstract: Spatial predictive models have been increasingly employed to generate spatial predictions for environmental management and conservation. The accuracy of predictive models and their predictions is essential to support evidence-based decision making with high-quality information. However, the development of predictive models with high predi...

Effective management of marine assets requires an understanding of ecosystems and the processes that influence patterns of biodiversity. Project D1 of the NESP Marine Biodiversity Hub has been collating and synthesising existing data through 2015/16, focusing on Commonwealth Marine Reserves (CMRs, now Australian Marine Parks AMPs) and Key Ecologica...

Lithified, drowned coastal dunes preserved below sea-level on continental shelves are rarely observed. Here we present new insights into the evolution of the Rottnest Shelf, southwestern Australia, where drowned parabolic dunes have been identified in high-resolution multibeam bathymetry (Figure 1). In 2012 Geoscience Australia undertook a marine...

Marine reserves are becoming progressively more important as anthropogenic impacts continue to increase, but we have little baseline information for most marine environments. In this study, we focus on the Oceanic Shoals Commonwealth Marine Reserve (CMR) in northern Australia, particularly the carbonate banks and terraces of the Sahul Shelf and Van...

Acoustic backscatter from the seafloor is a complex function of signal frequency, seabed roughness, grain size distribution, benthos, bioturbation, volume reverberation, and other factors. Angular response is the variation in acoustic backscatter with incident angle and is considered be an intrinsic property of the seabed. An unsupervised classific...

Environmental context Australia's tropical marine estate is a biodiversity hotspot that is threatened by human activities. Analysis and interpretation of large physical and geochemistry data sets provides important information on processes occurring at the seafloor in this poorly known area. These processes help us to understand how the seafloor fu...

As the number of marine protected areas (MPAs) increases globally, so does the need to assess if MPAs are meeting their management goals. Integral to this assessment is usually a long-term biological monitoring program, which can be difficult to develop for large and remote areas that have little available fine-scale habitat and biological data. Th...

Australian researchers in marine biodiversity and ecosystem science have a disproportionally high impact on global research as measured by their number of publications and their high profile leadership of international initiatives. At least 170 researchers from over 32 institutions contributed to this research which has a high uptake in government...

The extent to which fluids may leak from sedimentary basins to the seabed is a critical issue for assessing the potential of a basin for carbon capture and storage. The Petrel Sub-basin, located beneath central and eastern Joseph Bonaparte Gulf in tropical northern Australia, was identified as potentially suitable for the geological storage of CO2...

Geoscience Australia undertook a marine survey of the Leveque Shelf (survey number SOL5754/GA0340), a sub-basin of the Browse Basin, in May 2013. This survey provides seabed and shallow geological information to support an assessment of the CO2 storage potential of the Browse sedimentary basin. The basin, located on the Northwest Shelf, Western Aus...

A key requirement for informed marine-zone management is an understanding of the spatial patterns of marine biodiversity, often measured as species richness, total abundance or presence of key taxa. In the present study, we focussed on the diversity of benthic infauna and applied a predictive modelling approach to map biodiversity patterns for thre...

Angular response curves of multibeam backscatter data are used to predict the distributions of seven seabed cover types in an acoustically-complex area of the continental shelf of Western Australia. Several feature analysis approaches on the angular response curves are examined. A Probability Neural Network model was chosen for the predictive mappi...

Understanding and predicting the processes determining biological assemblages and marine biodiversity is critical to managing and conserving marine ecosystems. Infauna are a substantial component of shelf biodiversity and important contributors to ecological function. To examine the bio-physical relationships structuring infaunal assemblages across...

This report presents the results of a study on the use of multibeam sonar data to objectively classify and predict seabed substrate, with a focus upon delineating areas of hard and soft seabed. The analysis utilises multibeam sonar data, seabed samples and underwater video observations from four study areas on the Van Diemen Rise in the Timor Sea....

Many countries are now using or investigating offshore geological storage of CO2 as a means to reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions. Although associated research often focuses on deep-basin geology (e.g. seismic, geomagnetics), environmental data on the seabed and shallow subseabed is also crucial to 1) detect and characterise potential indicators of f...

The 11 March 2011 Tōhoku-oki tsunami caused widespread devastation to coastal communities in Japan. This event however was merely the latest, yet largest, of several similar occurrences in the Pacific that include the 2007 Solomon Islands, 2009 South Pacific and 2010 Chilean tsunamis. All have had their predecessors, and a growing data base of pala...

Marine physical and geochemical data can be valuable surrogates for predicting the distributions and assemblages of marine species. This study investigated the bio-environment (surrogacy) relationships in Jervis Bay, a sandy marine embayment in south-eastern Australia. A wide range of co-located physical data were analysed together with biological...

The origin of two sand layers buried in Pololū wetland, on the northeast coast of the island of Hawai'i, was investigated using a multi-proxy approach, including radiometric dating, sedimentology, geochemistry, micropalaeontology, palynology and historical records. Based on 210Pb, 137Cs and pollen data, the lower sand unit extending 250 to 350 m in...

Harris, P. T., Bridge, T. C. L., Beaman, R. J., Webster, J. M., Nichol, S. L., and Brooke, B. P. 2013. Submerged banks in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, greatly increase available coral reef habitat. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 70: 284–293. Anthropogenic global ocean warming is predicted to cause bleaching of many near-sea-surface (NSS) c...

Seabed sediment textural parameters such as mud, sand and gravel content can be useful surrogates for predicting patterns of benthic biodiversity. Multibeam sonar mapping can provide near-complete spatial coverage of high-resolution bathymetry and backscatter data that are useful in predicting sediment parameters. Multibeam acoustic data collected...

This book started as an idea at the GeoHab meeting held in Noumea, New Caledonia, in May 2007. We noticed that multibeam bathymetry maps of geomorphic features, sometimes shown as 3D fly-thru movies, followed by detailed sampling and photographic data (including underwater videos) illustrating the substrate conditions and associated biota was a con...

Southeastern Bay of Biscay (Basque coast) seafloor characterization and benthic habitat mapping was carried out integrating data from multibeam echosounder, topographic and bathymetric LiDAR, video, and sediment and biological sampling ranging from the intertidal zone up to 100 m depth over 1,096 km 2. The area shows high geomorpho-logic diversity...

The study of palaeotsunamis preserved in the sedimentary record has developed over the past three decades to a point where the criteria used to identify these events range from well-tested and accepted to new methods yet to receive wide application. In this paper we review progress with the development of these criteria and identify opportunities f...

The legacy of multiple marine transgressions is preserved in a complex morphology of ridges, mounds and reefs on the Carnarvon continental shelf, Western Australia. High-resolution multibeam sonar mapping, underwater photography and sampling across a 280km2 area seaward of the Ningaloo Coast World Heritage Area shows that these raised features prov...

A shoreline and archaeological excavations at Cook's Cove, eastern North Island, New Zealand were examined for stratigraphy and plant microfossils and results compared with previous interpretations of this site. Buried soils, distal tephras and pollen revealed evidence of pre- and post-settlement forest disturbance. Microfossil starch and calcium o...

Integrated marine mapping to inform management of the Timor Sea. In: The 48th Australian Marine Sciences Association Conference 2011, Perth. Jul. 2011.

The recent 29 September 2009 South Pacific and 27 February 2010 Chilean events are a graphic reminder that the tsunami hazard and risk for the Pacific Ocean region should not be forgotten. Pacific Islands Countries (PICs) generally have short (< 150 years) historic records, which means that to understand their tsunami hazard and risk researchers mu...

High resolution multibeam bathymetry is used to map and interpret seabed geomorphology for part of the northern Lord Howe Rise plateau in the Tasman Sea. A mapping system of geomorphic units and elements is used, extending the previous hierarchy of geomorphic provinces and features used for the Australian margin. The mapped area covers ∼25,500 km2...

This study presents new information on the regional geochemical characteristics of deep-sea floor sediments (1300–2423 m water depth) on the Lord Howe Rise (deep–sea plateau) and Gifford Guyot (seamount/tablemount), remote areas off eastern Australia. The aim was to provide a coherent synthesis for a suite of geochemical data that can be used to ma...

The flanks of mid-ocean volcanoes are inherently unstable features especially in the constructional phase of development when the volcano is active. Lateral and vertical stresses are placed on the volcanic edifice as it builds, with the flanks continuing to be unstable up to at least 1Ma after volcanism has ceased. The flanks of the Lord Howe Islan...

The two principal aims of this study were to synthesise physical and biological information to characterise the Lord Howe Rise (LHR) region and to use recent survey collections of benthic invertebrates (mostly large benthic epifauna) to describe its biogeography at regional and sub-regional scales. The LHR region is large (1.95millionkm2), spans tr...

Little is known about diversity patterns of biological assemblages in deep-sea environments, primarily because sampling deep-sea biota over vast areas is time consuming, difficult, and costly. In contrast, physical mapping capabilities are increasing rapidly, and are becoming more cost-effective. Consequently, the growing need to manage and conserv...

The Joseph Bonaparte Gulf and Timor Sea region (JBG-TS) is an area of significance for multiple resource needs, from marine planning to offshore industry development. As such, information on seabed environments in this region is of interest to both industry and marine management. Geoscience Australia is focussed on the collation and preparation of...

Multiproxy analyses of coastal sediments at Cape Pattisson, Chatham Island, identified evidence of two past tsunamis. The most recent event was the 1868 AD tsunami for which there is a wealth of historical evidence. We argue that the earlier event is most probably the 1604 AD South American tsunami. The chronology for these two events was establish...

A New Zealand palaeotsunami database has been developed. The philosophy has been to include as much tsunami-related data as possible. Most of the events recorded are true palaeotsunamis that occurred prior to the historical record or have no written observations. Some are hybrids that are in some manner poorly recorded historical events. Data inclu...

A detailed Holocene sedimentological and geomorphological history of the sedimentary infill of Lake Conjola, a barrier estuary on the southeast coast of Australia, is presented. Results show that a remnant Last Interglacial barrier system is preserved in the mouth of a narrow incised valley. During the early stage of Holocene sedimentary infill, a...

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) have only recently become available as a tool to investigate the biological and physical composition of the seabed utilizing a suite of image capture and high-resolution geophysical tools. In this study we trialled the application of an AUV, integrating AUV image capture with ship-based high resolution multibea...

A growing need to manage marine biodiversity sustainably at local, regional and global scales cannot be met by applying existing biological data. Abiotic surrogates of biodiversity are thus increasingly valuable in filling the gaps in our knowledge of biodiversity patterns, especially identification of hotspots, habitats needed by endangered or com...

Barrier islands in sheltered settings are rare coastal geomorphic features. Here we present a case study of controls on the evolution of Tapora Island, North Island, New Zealand. Tapora Island is an active barrier island located opposite the entrance to the Kaipara Harbour on a high-energy coast. Subsurface facies form an aggradational barrier isla...

An initial quantitative description of the biota associated with shelf rocky reefs within the newly created Commonwealth MPAs off Tasmania’s east and south coast.

Radiometrically calibrated ages from three reef cores are used to develop a Holocene reef growth chronostratigraphy and sea-level history in the Maldives, central Indian Ocean. Last interglacial reef (U-series age 122 ± 7 ka) was encountered at 14.1 m below mean sea level. An age of ca. 8100 calibrated (cal) yr B.P. immediately overlying this Pleis...

Subtidal to intertidal deposits from the margins of Kaipara Harbour in Northland preserve a c. 23 000 year incomplete sedimentary record of the transition from terrestrial to estuarine conditions. Cores are used to reconstruct the depositional setting for this transition, interpreted as a succession from dune and freshwater wetland to shallow estua...