What Is Ocean Floor Mapping

Ocean floor mapping has two or three essential aspects a bathymetry depth and b magnetometry and sometimes c gravimetry.

What is ocean floor mapping.

Typically finely wrought ocean maps have been the result of extensive sonar. 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. The depth was then measured by the amount of line that had payed out. Seafloor mapping also called seabed imaging is the measurement of water depth of a given body of water.

A the bathymetry is being continuously improved by icebreaker. Huge trenches walls flatlands and seamounts fill the seascape and have a direct impact on the water bodies above them. The latest status of its seabed 2030 project was announced to coincide with world hydrography day. This is expensive and time consuming so sonar maps are mostly only made of places where ships spend the most time.

Plate tectonics and the ocean floor bathymetry the shape of the ocean floor is largely a result of a process called plate tectonics. In other words it is the underwater equivalent to topography. It is the only intergovernmental organisation with a mandate to map the entire ocean floor. The ocean s floor is as complex as it is deep.

In fact scientists have mapped more of the surface of the moon mars and venus than the surface of our ocean. 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 outer rocky layer of the earth includes about a dozen large sections called tectonic plates that are arranged like a spherical jig saw puzzle floating on top of the earth s hot flowing mantle. 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.