GEBCO’s goal is to provide the most authoritative, publicly available bathymetry data sets for the world’s oceans. The group also helps train a new generation of scientists in ocean bathymetry through a program at the University of New Hampshire funded by the Nippon Foundation, based in Tokyo, Japan. Ferrini said that the training program has helped bring in younger scientists from many nations, and has spread the mapping project’s reach around the world.
Ocean bathymetry can influence climate, sea level rise and general earth processes, weather and tsunamis, the distribution of sea life and fisheries management, Ferrini said. But exactly what the project will do for us is unclear: “Part of the story is we don’t know, because we haven’t mapped it yet,” Ferrini said. “It’s the foundation of exploration—we have to know the general shape before we can go in with instruments and really explore.”
The effort to chart the whole of the earth’s ocean topography dates back a century or more, when an international group began the work of standardizing charts and nomenclature. In 1994, GEBCO produced the first digital atlas of the oceans.
The latest release of the GEBCO Digital Atlas was published in 2003 and last updated in 2015. The Centenary Edition of the GEBCO Digital Atlas includes a global set of digital bathymetric contours and coastlines, the latest GEBCO 30 arc-second grid, GEBCO One Minute Grid and the GEBCO gazetteer of geographic names of undersea features. It is accompanied by software for viewing and accessing the data sets.
Read more about Ferrini’s work at Lamont here.
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