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Acoustic Mapping of Estuarine Benthic Habitats: Results of a Trial in Wallis Lake, NSW

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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A collaborative field trial of the Quester-Tangent View Series 5 single beam acoustic benthic mapping system was recently conducted in Wallis Lake by Geoscience Australia and Quester Tangent Corporation. The survey involved acquisition of the acoustic backscatter data from the northern channels and basins of Wallis Lake. Quester-Tangent software (IMPACT v3) was used to classify acoustic echograms that returned from the lake bottom into statistically different acoustic classes, using principal components analysis. Six acoustically different substrate types were identified in the Wallis Lake survey area. Ground-truthing was undertaken to identify the sedimentological and biological features of the lake floor that influenced the shape of the return echograms. For each sample, measurements were made of grain size, wet bulk density, total organic carbon, CaCO3 content, and mass of coarse fraction (mainly shell) material. Statistical cluster analysis and multi-dimensional scaling were utilised to identify any physical similarities between groups of ground-truthing sites. The analysis revealed four distinct and mappable substrate types in the study area. The degree of association between acoustic classes and measured sediment parameters was also quantified. Cluster and MDS analysis revealed that, based on the parameters measured, the six acoustic classes were not uniquely linked to the sediment groups, suggesting that factors other than the sediment parameters alone are influencing the acoustic signal. The spatial interpretation of the Wallis Lake Quester-Tangent data represents the first quantification of non-seagrass habitats in the deeper areas of the lake, and provides a useful indicatior of benthic habitat diversity and abundance. For future studies, a more quantitative measure of faunal burrow size and density, and also other sedimentary bedforms, is recommended.

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Title Acoustic Mapping of Estuarine Benthic Habitats: Results of a Trial in Wallis Lake, NSW
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/6b7ec616-f54e-4744-989c-942f5c0a3b7e
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        152.42,
        -32.25
      ],
      [
        152.53,
        -32.25
      ],
      [
        152.53,
        -32.17
      ],
      [
        152.42,
        -32.17
      ],
      [
        152.42,
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      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Acoustic Mapping of Estuarine Benthic Habitats: Results of a Trial in Wallis Lake, NSW". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/acoustic-mapping-of-estuarine-benthic-habitats-results-of-a-trial-in-wallis-lake-nsw