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Biogeography of the Lord Howe Rise region, Tasman Sea

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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In this review we aim to synthesise physical and biological information on the Lord Howe Rise (LHR) region to describe its biogeography at a regional scale (100s of kilometres) and assess this in a national and global context. The LHR region is large (1.95 million km2), spans tropical and cool temperate latitudes (18.4oS to 40.3oS), and is topographically complex being formed of large expanses of soft sediment basins and plateaus (i.e. subdued bathymetric features), with scattered seamounts, guyots, knolls, and pinnacles (i.e. raised bathymetric features). Physical factors can vary between these two broad feature types, particularly regarding depth and substrate, although no clear relationship was detected between sediment texture and geomorphic features across the survey area. Biological data from two recent surveys (TAN0713 and NORFANZ) show differences in assemblages and species distribution between raised and subdued bathymetric features and suggest that biological communities are indeed influenced by substrate as well as depth-related variables, with some taxa such as demersal fish showing latitudinal gradients. There are only limited spatially-replicated studies and no time-series data available for most of the LHR region, but paleo-environmental processes and examples from other regions provide some indication of migration, speciation, and endemism in the LHR region.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Biogeography of the Lord Howe Rise region, Tasman Sea
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/986969de-19a8-48e2-af38-0c508afae6bd
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 22/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        150.0,
        -40.0
      ],
      [
        165.0,
        -40.0
      ],
      [
        165.0,
        -20.0
      ],
      [
        150.0,
        -20.0
      ],
      [
        150.0,
        -40.0
      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Biogeography of the Lord Howe Rise region, Tasman Sea". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/biogeography-of-the-lord-howe-rise-region-tasman-sea