The Seamap Australia National Benthic Habitat Layer (NBHL) is a compilation of benthic habitat datasets obtained from various sectors including research, government, industry and community sources, across Australia. Disparate datasets are integrated into a single national-scale benthic habitat database, and classified uniformly under a national classification scheme implemented as a controlled vocabulary ( https://vocabs.ardc.edu.au/viewById/129).

For acceptance into the 'formal' (validated_ Seamap Australia NBHL (see https://metadata.imas.utas.edu.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/4739e4b0-4dba-4ec5-b658-02c09f27ab9a), source habitat datasets must meet a set of Acceptance Criteria (documented in https://seamapaustralia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/SeamapAustraliaDataAcceptanceGuidelines.pdf).

Broadly speaking, for inclusion in the Seamap Australia NBHL, datasets must:

(1) be well-described by metadata or associated documentation;

(2) employ a single, consistent classification scheme which avoids non-deterministic or ambiguous terms;

(3) bequality-controlled by the provider prior to contribution;

(4) beacquired using an established and community-endorsed form of data collection (eg satellite, aerial or acoustic remote sensing); and

(5) have documented evidence of ground-truthing validation at the time of data collection (e.g. drop camera, towed video, benthic grabs).

This record describes habitat datasets that meet Acceptance Criteria 1-4, but *have not* been validated/ground-truthed and are therefore ineligible for inclusion in the formal Seamap Australia NBHL. They have been synthesised and uniformly classified using an identical methodology to the NBHL, but represent an intermediate collection of habitat datasets that would benefit from field ground-truthing in order to validate the habitat classifications.

The Seamap Australia synthesis of unvalidated habitat datasets can be viewed, analysed and downloaded from the Seamap Australia data portal ( https://seamapaustralia.org/map). This dataset should be considered a “live” asset and will continue to develop as more unvalidated habitat datasets are collected or made available.

The most current (2024) version of the data is available from the following endpoints:

WMS: https://geoserver.imas.utas.edu.au/geoserver/seamap/wms

WFS: https://geoserver.imas.utas.edu.au/geoserver/seamap/wfs

Layer name: SeamapAus_NBHL_unvalidated

Various download options are supplied in the “Online resources” section of this record.