Dataset: bathymetry

One objective of the SO GLOBEC program is to produce a better knowledge of the sea floor bathymetry in the program study area. Much of Marguerite Bay and the adjacent shelf was poorly charted when the program was started in 2000, so we first created a local area improved version (ETOPO8.2A) of the Sandwell and Smith ETOPO2 2-min digital gridded bathymetry for the SO GLOBEC study area. The first SO GLOBEC mooring cruise on the R/V Lawrence M. Gould in March 2001 quickly showed that the 2-min resolution of ETOPO8.2A does not resolve many of the canyons and abrupt changes in topography which characterize Marguerite Bay and the inner- to-mid shelf region, nor is it particularly accurate in even the more uniform terrain regions. To begin to improve this situation, high-quality swath bathymetry data were collected during both SO GLOBEC broadscale surveys using the SeaBeam system aboard the R/VIB Nathaniel B. Palmer in 2001. In addition, an extensive multibeam survey was conducted along the deep trough leading into Marguerite Bay aboard the R/VIB James Clark Ross in 2001. While the 2001 R/VIB Nathaniel B. Palmer SeaBeam data may need some adjustment for sound speed corrections, an initial attempt has been made to merge these new data sets with all existing center trackline and multibeam data available at the U.S. Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) or provided by other investigators.