Geoscience Australias GEOMACS model was utilised to produce hindcast hourly time series of continental shelf (~20 to 300 m depth) bed shear stress (unit of measure: Pascal, Pa) on a 0.1 degree grid covering the period March 1997 to February 2008 (inclusive). The hindcast data represents the combined contribution to the bed shear stress by waves, tides, wind and density-driven circulation. Ecological data collected from Torres Strait suggests that bed shear stresses exceeding 0.4 Pa are important in determining the species present (Long, Bode, and Pitcher 1997). Although this data may not be representative of other regions or benthic communities, it has been utilised to calculate two parameters for determining the relationship between shear bed stress and the benthic community. One of the parameters, which is denoted byW, and is calculated using; W=A/B, where A= t.dt for t greater and equal to 0.4 and B= t.dt represents the stress in excess of 0.4 Pa integrated over time as a proportion of the total stress integrated over time, and is intended to represent the proportion of the total integrated stress that has some control on the benthic community (Hughes and Harris 2008). This dataset is a contribution to the CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub and is hosted temporarily by CMAR on behalf of Geoscience Australia.
