| Summary: | Maintenance and Update Frequency: asNeeded Statement: The benthic Provincial Bioregions were defined in 2004 as part of a program run by Geoscience Australia, CSIRO Marine Research and the National Oceans Office to create a spatial inventory of large-scale benthic biogeographical regions for Australias Exclusive Economic Zone. The Provincial Bioregions were defined by the regional structure in demersal fishes as represented by a one-dimensional made up of 281 nodes that correspond to the 500 m isobath around the Australian mainland. The analysis of the demersal fish data was undertaken by CSIRO Marine Research (Last et al., 2004). None of the offshore island territories were included in this assessment and each island territory was considered a separate bioregion. The boundaries of the Provincial Bioregions below 2,000 m water depth were defined solely by the geomorphic features, which were defined by the International Hydrographic Office (IHO, 2002), and were identified using a 250 m spatial resolution bathymetry model with reference to previously published geological studies. In the analysis of the demersal fish data, the boundaries between the Provincial Bioregions were defined by a Jaccard Analysis of the distributions. The final boundaries were drawn by eye around the boundaries of geomorphic features by a panel of scientific experts at a series of workshops with reference to previous studies. When completed, the boundaries defined the separate polygons and they were stored as an ArcGIS shape file. Care was taken to include as much biological information as possible when positioning the boundaries, particularly in shallow water (500 m). Credit Integrated Marine and Coastal Regionalisation of Australia (IMCRA) v4.0 - Provincial Bioregions. (c) Commonwealth of Australia, Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage. (2006). A regionalisation of Australian waters (excluding waters adjacent to the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, and waters adjacent to the Australian ...
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