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Deep-sea bio-physical variables as surrogates for biological assemblages, an example from the Lord Howe Rise

Created 26/03/2026

Updated 26/03/2026

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Deep sea environments occupy much of the sea floor, yet little is known about diversity patterns of biological assemblages from these environments. Physical mapping technologies and their availability are increasing rapidly. Sampling deep-sea biota over vast areas of the deep sea, however, is time consuming, difficult, and costly. Consequently, the growing need to manage and conserve marine resources, particularly deep sea areas that are sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance and change, is leading the promotion of physical data as surrogates to predict biological assemblages. However, few studies have directly examined the predictive ability of these surrogates. The physical environment and biological assemblages were surveyed for two adjacent areas - the western flank of Lord Howe Rise (LHR) and the Gifford Guyot - spanning combined water depths of 250 to 2,200 m depth on the northern part of the LHR, in the southern Pacific Ocean. Multibeam acoustic surveys were used to generate large-scale geomorphic classification maps that were superimposed over the study area. Forty two towed-video stations were deployed across the area capturing 32 hours of seabed video, 6,229 still photographs, that generated 3,413 seabed characterisations of physical and biological variables. In addition, sediment and biological samples were collected from 36 stations across the area. The northern Lord Howe Rise was characterised by diverse but sparsely distributed faunas for both the vast soft-sediment environments as well as the discrete rock outcrops. Substratum type and depth were the main variables correlated with benthic assemblage composition. Soft-sediments were characterised by low to moderate levels of bioturbation, while rocky outcrops supported diverse but sparse assemblages of suspension feeding invertebrates, such as cold water corals and sponges which in turn supported epifauna, dominated by ophiuroids and crinoids. While deep environments of the LHR flank .

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Title Deep-sea bio-physical variables as surrogates for biological assemblages, an example from the Lord Howe Rise
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/en/dataset/d78870cb-498d-4cf8-ba18-a7b060c84ea6
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 data.gov.au

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on data.gov.au "Deep-sea bio-physical variables as surrogates for biological assemblages, an example from the Lord Howe Rise". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/deep-sea-bio-physical-variables-as-surrogates-for-biological-assemblages-an-example-from-the-lo9