What Is Ocean Floor Mapping

It is the only intergovernmental organisation with a mandate to map the entire ocean floor.

What is ocean floor mapping.

It is a global initiative between japan s non profit nippon foundation and the general bathymetric chart of the oceans gebco which is the only intergovernmental organisation to map the entire. The ocean s floor is as complex as it is deep. Seafloor mapping also called seabed imaging is the measurement of water depth of a given body of water. This is expensive and time consuming so sonar maps are mostly only made of places where ships spend the most time.

In other words it is the underwater equivalent to topography. A history of ocean floor mapping and dating the ocean floor is a mysterious place that marine geologists and oceanographers have struggled to fully grasp. Typically finely wrought ocean maps have been the result of extensive sonar. Plate tectonics and the ocean floor bathymetry the shape of the ocean floor is largely a result of a process called plate tectonics.

The latest status of its seabed 2030 project was announced to coincide with world hydrography day. The nippon foundation gebco seabed 2030 project has mapped one fifth of the world s ocean floor. Bathymetric measurements are conducted with various methods from sonar and lidar techniques to buoys and satellite altimetry. Bob embley geophysicist noaa pacific marine environmental laboratory.

Huge trenches walls flatlands and seamounts fill the seascape and have a direct impact on the water bodies above them. Ocean floor mapping has two or three essential aspects a bathymetry depth and b magnetometry and sometimes c gravimetry. The first primitive maps of the sea floor came from soundings which involved lowering weighted lines into the water and noting when the tension on the line slackened. In fact scientists have mapped more of the surface of the moon mars and venus than the surface of our ocean.

The depth was then measured by the amount of line that had payed out.