Capacity Building in Ocean Bathymetry the Nippon Foundation GEBCO Training Programme at the University of New Hampshire
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INTERNATIONAL HYDROGRAPHIC REVIEW VOL. 6 NO. 3 (NEW SERIES) NOVEMBER 2005 Note Capacity Building in Ocean Bathymetry The Nippon Foundation GEBCO Training Programme at the University of New Hampshire Srinivas Karlapati1, Dave Monahan2, Hugo Montoro Caceres3, Taisei Morishita4, Abubakar Abdullahi Mustapha5, Walter Reynoso Peralta6, Shereen Sharma7 and Clive Angwenyi8 Abstract Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO). GEBCO predates the IHO, and A successful Capacity Building project in since 1974 has been allied with both IHO hydrography is underway at the University and the Intergovernmental Oceanograph- of New Hampshire. Organised by the Gen- ic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO. GEBCO eral Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans and produces world bathymetry maps, in Production of this sponsored by the Nippon Foundation, the paper and digital form, a digital grid of paper is supported programme trains hydrographers and depths, and a Gazetteer of undersea financially by the other marine scientists in bathymetric names. In order to help build increased Nippon Foundation mapping. Participants are formally pre- capacity in bathymetric mapping, GEBCO pared to produce bathymetric maps when has established an international training 1 National Institute of Oceanography, they return to their home countries programme in ocean bathymetry. In part- Dona Paula, Goa – through a combination of graduate level nership with the Nippon Foundation of 403 004, India 2 Center for Coastal courses and workshops, practical field Japan, GEBCO has contracted with the and Ocean training, participation in deep ocean Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, University of New Hampshire, research cruises, working visits to other Mapping/NOAA-UNH Joint Hydrographic USA laboratories and institutions, focused lec- Center of the University of New Hamp- 3 Direccion de Hidrografia y tures from visiting experts, and the prepa- shire, to develop and offer a graduate cer- Navegacion, Av ration of a bathymetry map of their area tificate in Ocean Mapping. This paper Gamarra Nro. 500, Chucuito Callao, from public domain data. Intangible but reports on the first year of this pro- Peru necessary preparation includes the net- gramme. 4 Hydrographic and Oceanographic working with professionals in bathymetry Department, Japan and related fields within Ocean Mapping, Coast Guard, 5-3-1 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, 3: and the building of a cadre of graduates The Need for Capacity to Tokyo, Japan who will form the basis of international Produce Ocean Bathymetry 5 Nigerian Navy, Naval Headquarters bathymetric mapping in the future. MOD, Abuja, Although bathymetry is a fundamental sci- Nigeria 6 Hydrography ence having a wide range of applications, Service, Argentinian Introduction availability of accurate bathymetry is in Navy, Buenos Aires, Argentina general taken for granted. However, the 7 P.O Box 3370, Through the International Hydrographic seafloor is largely unexplored: an over- Lautoka, Fiji Islands 8 Kenya Marine and Organisation (IHO), hydrographers co- whelming proportion of it has never been Fisheries Research operate in many ways, including contribut- measured directly but only mapped Institute, P.O. Box 81651 Mombasa, ing to the production of bathymetric maps through extrapolation from sparse, widely Kenya of the deep ocean through the General spaced data. Estimates are that, at most, 69 INTERNATIONAL HYDROGRAPHIC REVIEW a mere 5 to 10% of the ocean floor has been explored Table 1 GEBCO Core Subjects ((Holcombe and Moore 2000); (Committee on Nation- Depth measurements al Needs for Coastal Mapping and Charting Ocean - Multibeam echo-sounder (MBES), single-beam Studies Board Mapping Science Committee 2004); echo-sounder, multichannel seismics (Harper and Sharman 2003). Almost every scientific - Remote sensing - lidar and hydrographic cruise is a voyage of exploration, - Instrumentation packages - Sidescan one that will result in areas of the seafloor being - AUVs directly mapped for the very first time. As witness, the last twenty years of ocean exploration have seen the Oceanography - Acoustics; backscatter, physics of sound in discovery of gas hydrates in sea floor sediments, of the sea, chemistry of ocean water, propaga- pharmaceuticals from the sea, of ‘black smokers’, of tion of sound cobalt crusts, and of chemosynthetic life on ocean - Associated science: fisheries, turbulence, tsunami modelling ridges. These are regarded by many ocean scientists - Oceanography: tides as but a few of the myriad discoveries that remain to - Environmental aspects: coastal oceanography, be found. slope and shelf processes - Marine biota and mammals Despite its wide-ranging uses, bathymetry has often Sea Floor been dismissed in the minds of many marine scien- - Plate tectonics, sea floor morphology, ocean tists as merely measuring depth to the seafloor. basins, sedimentary processes, hydrothermal- thermal processes These scientists used bathymetry as the spatial struc- - Gravity-magnetic relationships to seafloor fab- ture for their own investigations, and consider it to be rics complete. Unfortunately, ‘Bathymetric maps tend to be taken as gospel with inadequate appreciation of Positioning - Geodesy the sketchy database on which they may be built, or - Satellites the inadequate quality of (some) of the original data’ - Navigation and positioning on and in sea (SCOR Working Group 107 2002) reflects the reality Maps and Charts that deep bathymetry is far from complete and needs - IHO standards improving. - Map/chart production - GIS Hydrographers fully understand the use of shallow - Nomenclature of features water bathymetry in preparing nautical charts for the Data processing safety of life and navigation at sea, and support it at - Digitising, sampling many organisational levels, deep water bathymetry - Data bases - Gridding has not benefited from the same level of support. Hav- - Contouring ing such a fundamental importance in marine sci- - Spatial statistics: Kriging, fractals ences, to the point where the accuracy of other - Post processing of MBES data branches of marine sciences depends on the accura- IT subjects cy of bathymetry, has not secured it a significant level -Web site creation and authoring of institutional support. Fortunately, the Nippon Foun- -Programming/coding: applications of, use of, dation GEBCO reported here represents a major step GEBCO as an entity towards rectifying this deficiency. - History of GEBCO and Ocean Mapping - Needs and requirements: use of GEBCO by cable layers, oil companies, defence, and v.v. - Copyright, who owns soundings, contours, Alfred Wegner Institute, Bremmerhaven, Germany charts Canadian Hydrographic Service, Ottawa, Canada Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation - Outreach, community relationships de la mer, Brest, France - UNCLOS - Maritime Law National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder, USA National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, Personal Skills United Kingdom -Writing, oral presentation, communication University of Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden Table 1: Topics to be included in the training of Table 2: Institutions hosting GEBCO Nippon Foundation bathymetrists, after GEBCO. scholars on training assignments, 2005. 70 INTERNATIONAL HYDROGRAPHIC REVIEW Need for the Training Programme against which potential teaching organisations could be evaluated. Based on these two documents, a Very generally, the rate at which mapping of the sea search for a suitable teaching organisation which floor progresses is a function of: could run the course in ocean bathymetry was - the size of the surface to be mapped undertaken. This process led to the submission of - the efficiency of the mapping tools that can be proposals from six universities in five countries. To applied make the final choice between these well-qualified - the speed of the platforms that carry those tools, teaching organisations, GEBCO set up a neutral their amount of use and the areas that they are Evaluation Group which ranked the six organisations deployed in and announced their unanimous decision that the - the organisational structures in place to assimi- best candidate was the Center for Coastal and late the raw data and transform it into maps Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center at the - the number of skilled people who work at the task University of New Hampshire (UNH). (Carron et al. 2001) address items a), b) and c) and Advertising for potential students resulted in 57 conclude that if the world ocean could be surveyed applications from people in 32 countries. GEBCO by modern multibeam methods, to survey only the and the Nippon Foundation jointly selected students areas deeper than 500m would require something on the basis of previous education, language compe- like 800 ship years. Clearly the world ocean must be tency, likelihood of successful completion, sup- mapped by the Coastal States of the world working port/endorsement of home organisation, likelihood in concert. The organisational structure they do so of working in ocean mapping upon completion, and through is the GEBCO organisation, an international geographic distribution of home state to offer maxi- organisation which produces charts and digital grids mum cross-fertilisation among the class. Students of the world ocean by collating, interpreting and con- for this pioneer class came from Argentina, Fiji, touring, with the aid of directional fabrics revealed by India, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria and Peru, with back- satellite gravity, soundings and multibeam bathyme- grounds in hydrography, geology, geophysics and try