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Benthic environments of the Lord Howe Rise submarine plateau: Introduction to the special volume

Created 07/03/2026

Updated 07/03/2026

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The Australian exclusive economic zone (EEZ) contains1.6 million km2 of submarine plateaus, equal to about 13.8% of the world's known inventory of these features. This disproportionate occurrence of plateaus presents Australia with an increased global responsibility to understand and protect the benthic habitats and associated ecosystems. This special volume presents the results of two major marine surveys carried out on the Lord Howe Rise plateau during 2003 and 2007, during which benthic biological and geological samples, underwater photographs, video and multibean sonar bathymetry data were collected. The benthic habitats present on Lord Howe Rise include hard/rocky substrates covering a small area of volcanic peaks (around 31 km2) and parts of other larger seamounts (eg. the Lord Howe Island seamount) which support rich and abundant epifaunal assemblages dominated by suspension feeding invertebrates. These habitats appear to qualify as ecologically and biologically significant areas under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) scientific selection criterion 1 (uniqueness or rarity), 4 (vulnerability, fragility, sensitivity or slow recovery) and 7 (naturalness). The collection of papers included in this special volume represents a major advance in knowledge about benthic habitats of the Lord Howe Rise, but also about the ecology of plateaus in general.

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Field Value
Title Benthic environments of the Lord Howe Rise submarine plateau: Introduction to the special volume
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/en/dataset/a437428a-eb86-4699-b6d6-07070202b377
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 22/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Benthic environments of the Lord Howe Rise submarine plateau: Introduction to the special volume". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/benthic-environments-of-the-lord-howe-rise-submarine-plateau-introduction-to-the-special-volume7