GA-SaMMT

Geoscience Australia's Semi-automated Morphological Mapping Tools (GA-SaMMT) for Seabed Characterisation

Seabed characterisation requires the measurement, description and classification of physical features on the seabed. A key first step in this process is the identification of morphological forms, as derived from bathymetric data. To facilitate rapid and consistent morphological mapping, Geoscience Australia has developed several semi-automated ArcGIS toolboxes that:

• Generate polygons from bathymetry surfaces that represent bathymetric high and bathymetric low seabed features
• Calculate metrics/attributes to describe the characteristics of the polygons
• Classify individual polygons into one of the bathymetric high or low seabed morphological features

The toolboxes adopt the suite of terms as presented in the glossary of seabed morphology deatures defined by Dove, D., Nanson, R., Bjarnadóttir, L., Guinan, J., Gafeira, J., Post, A., Dolan, M.; Stewart, H.; Arosio, R, Scott, G.. (2020). A two-part seabed geomorphology classification scheme (v.2); Part 1: morphology features glossary. Zenodo..

The detailed description of the GA-SaMMT and its applications to several real-world case studies are presented in Huang Z, Nanson R, McNeil M, Wenderlich M, Gafeira J, Post A and Nichol S (2023) Rule-based semiautomated tools for mapping seabed morphology from bathymetry data. Front. Mar. Sci. 10:1236788. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2023.1236788.

Documentation

User guide

See the user guide for a tutorial and walkthrough of the toolsets.

Toolbox details

For more detailed information on the individual toolboxes see https://ga-sammt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Toolboxes

The ESRI toolboxes contains seven Python toolboxes:

• BathymetricHigh is used to map bathymetric high features and contains:
  • TPI Tool Bathymetric High
  • TPI LMI Tool Bathymetric High
  • Openness Tool Bathymetric High
• BathymetricLow is used to map bathymetric low features and contains:
  • TPI Tool Bathymetric Low
  • TPI CI Tool Bathymetric Low
  • Openness Tool Bathymetric Low
• AddAttributes is used to calculate attributes for bathymetric high and low features and contains:
  • Add Shape Attributes High Tool
  • Add Shape Attributes Low Tool
  • Add Topographic Attributes High Tool
  • Add Topographic Attributes Low Tool
  • Add Profile Attributes High Tool
  • Add Profile Attributes Low Tool
• AddAttributesFast is used to calculate attributes for bathymetric high and low features using multiprocessing and contains:
  • Add Shape Attributes High Tool Fast
  • Add Shape Attributes Low Tool Fast
  • Add Profile Attributes High Tool Fast
  • Add Profile Attributes Low Tool Fast
• ClassificationFeature is used to classify bathymetric high and low features into morphological categories as defined by Dove et al and contains:
  • Classify Bathymetric High Features
  • Classify Bathymetric Low Features
• Accessory_Tools is used to help the mapping processes and contains:
  • Merge Connected Features Tool
  • Connect Nearby Linear Features Tool
  • Connect Nearby Linear HF Features Tool
  • Update Feature Boundary
• Surface is used to map three-class morophological surface and contains:
  • Morphological Surface Tool Bathymetry
  • Morphological Surface Tool Slope

Publication and sample data

• See here for additional details including sample datasets.
• See here for the detailed description of GA-SaMMT.