What Is Ocean Floor Mapping

The ocean s floor is as complex as it is deep.

What is ocean floor mapping.

Typically finely wrought ocean maps have been the result of extensive sonar. This is expensive and time consuming so sonar maps are mostly only made of places where ships spend the most time. 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. The depth was then measured by the amount of line that had payed out.

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. By conducting a multibeam sonar survey similar to a medical ultrasound scientists are able to image the sea bottom. In fact scientists have mapped more of the surface of the moon mars and venus than the surface of our ocean. Bob embley geophysicist noaa pacific marine environmental laboratory.

In other words it is the underwater equivalent to topography. The latest status of its seabed 2030 project was announced to coincide with world hydrography day. Seafloor mapping also called seabed imaging is the measurement of water depth of a given body of water. The nippon foundation gebco seabed 2030 project has mapped one fifth of the world s ocean floor.

Ocean floor mapping has two or three essential aspects a bathymetry depth and b magnetometry and sometimes c gravimetry. It is the only intergovernmental organisation with a mandate to map the entire ocean floor. Huge trenches walls flatlands and seamounts fill the seascape and have a direct impact on the water bodies above them. 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.

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.