DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7127186
title: Sediment size dataset for Australia

description: This repository contains a dataset of median grain size (d50) for the Australian coastline. The sediment samples were collected by Professor Andrew D. Short during field campaigns between 1979 and 1999. This dataset includes all the <em>sand</em> samples collected in the <em>swash zone</em><em>. </em>More information about this dataset can be found in Australian Coastal Systems book. The beach sand sample collection is physically stored at Geoscience Australia (Canberra) and can be viewed by contacting AusGeoSamples@ga.gov.au. <strong>Dataset description</strong> The data is contained in the file <strong>Australia_dataset.geojson</strong>. This geospatial layer contains a linestring for each individual beach/embayment. The coordinate system of the geospatial layer is WGS84.<br> <br> This geospatial layer matches and complements the Australian beach-face slope dataset published here https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5606216 and described in <em>Vos et al. 2022. Note that not every beach in the layer contains a sediment size value.</em> Each feature has the following attributes: <strong>Grain-size and location attributes</strong><br> - <em>d50</em>: Median grain-size in millimetres. Obtained by sieving the sand samples. The original sand samples were donated to Geoscience Australia.<br> - <em>beach_id</em>: Database id for each beach, e.g., aus0001, aus0002, …, aus5255 (same as in Vos et al. 2022),<br> - <em>ABSAMP_id</em>: id of the sample in the ABSAMP database, e.g., nsw0001, tas001, qld001 etc. See the Smartline from Geoscience Australia for the location of each id.<br> - <em>distance_to_sample</em>: Distance in metres between the linestring in the ABSAMP database and the linestring in this layer.<br> - <em>latitude</em>: Latitude of the centroid of the beach in WGS84.<br> - <em>longitude</em>: Longitude of the centroid of the beach in WGS84.<br> - <em>beach_length</em>: Length of the beach or embayment, very long beaches (&gt;50km) were split to optimise memory usage.<br> - <em>coastal_region</em>: Database id corresponding to the 23 coastal regions as identified by Thom et al. (2018).<br> - <em>primary_comp_id</em>: Database id corresponding to the 100 primary sediment compartments as identified by Thom et al. (2018).<br> - <em>secondary_comp_id</em>: Database id corresponding to the 361 secondary sediment Compartments as identified by Thom et al. (2018). <strong>Wave climate and tide range attributes</strong><br> - Hs<em>_mean</em>: Mean Significant Wave Height at the closest grid point in the ERA5 re-analysis dataset (computed using 6-hourly time-series between 2010 and 2020).<br> - Hs<em>_max</em>: Max Significant Wave Height at the closest grid point in the ERA5 re-analysis dataset (computed using 6-hourly time-series between 2010 and 2020).<br> - <em>Tp_mean</em>: Mean Peak Wave Period at the closest grid point in the ERA5 re-analysis dataset (computed using 6-hourly time-series between 2010 and 2020).<br> - <em>Wdir_mean</em>: Mean Wave Direction at the closest grid point in the ERA5 re-analysis dataset (computed using 6-hourly time-series between 2010 and 2020).<br> - <em>Wdir_weighted_average</em>: More robust estimator of the Mean Wave Direction obtained by computing the average wave direction weighted by wave energy flux.<br> - <em>hsig_median</em>: Median Significant Wave Height from the closest grid point in the CAWCR re-analysis dataset<br> - <em>mstr</em>: Mean Spring Tide Range at the beach calculated from the closest grid point in the FES2014 global tide model <strong>Beach-face slope attributes (same as in Vos et al. 2022)</strong><br> - <em>beach_slope_average</em>: Average of the beach-face slope at the site, weighted by the width of the confidence bands, value between 0.01 and 0.2<br> - <em>width_ci_average</em>: Average width of confidence band over the comprised transects, value between 0 and 0.19<br> - <em>quality_flag</em>: Quality flag indicating the confidence in the slope estimate at this transect (High, Medium or Low)<br> - <em>prc_msrt_obs</em>: percentage of the Mean Spring Tide Range observed by the satellite-derived shorelines<br> - <em>min_tide_obs</em>: Lowest tide level observed by the satellite-derived shorelines<br> - <em>max_tide_obs</em>: Highest tide level observed by the satellite-derived shorelines<br> - <em>sl_points_average</em>: Average number of datapoints in the shoreline time-series over the comprised transects
description: This dataset was published with the consent of Professor Andrew Short, who collected each individual sand sample.