I don't know why I never came across this before but here is a simulator for the Alvin submersible.
Must remember to try this out down in the VAST lab.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
A Modern Measurement of the Radius of the Earth | Wired Science | Wired.com
http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/a-modern-measurement-of-the-radius-of-the-earth/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
Dr. Art Trembanis
Associate Professor
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding
"Il faut aller voir" -JYC
Thursday, February 2, 2012
A clearer view of the seafloor in Google Earth
February 2, 2012 3:00 PM
by Lat Long Blog
A clearer view of the seafloor in Google Earth
More than two-thirds of Earth is covered by oceans. If you drained all of that water away, you'd see huge basins that have never been explored, an undiscovered planet in our own backyard.
Today is the three year anniversary of an explorable ocean seafloor in Google Earth. We just released a major update to our global underwater terrain dataset, called bathymetry, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in partnership with NOAA, the US Navy, NGA, and GEBCO (with major contributions from JAMSTEC, IFREMER and IBCAO).
The update covers ocean topography from all over the globe and reveals our most accurate view of the seafloor to date. This new detail comes from spacecraft measurements of bumps and dips in the ocean surface as well as shipboard soundings from surveys carried out by over 40 countries. With this update to ocean terrain data in Google Earth, 15 percent of the seafloor is now available at 1 km resolution.
You may remember a Sun article reporting the discovery of a street grid where it's believed the lost city of Atlantis would have been located off the West Coast of Africa. The discovery turned out to be a data artifact related to the way data was collected from a ship sailing back and forth to survey an unknown area. This recent seafloor update has been improved to blend better, and "Atlantis" has again disappeared into legend.
Previous terrain data showed what appeared to be a city grid on the ocean floor (left), which was confused for the lost city of Atlantis. Updated data more accurately reflects the seafloor terrain (right).
(Click on image to enlarge)
Another place you'll notice an improvement in the ocean terrain data is the Mediterranean Sea, particularly south of Cyprus, where the boundary between the Eurasian and Arabian plates is now more clearly defined.
The Mediterranean Sea: before (left) and after (right)
(Click on image to enlarge)
Our last example shows improvements to the land-sea mask along the coastline of Guam. You'll notice a dramatic improvement in the resolution of both the coastline and neighboring Mariana's Trench, the deepest trench in the world.
Guam and Mariana's Trench before (left) and after (right)
(Click on image to enlarge)
In order to make this update possible, our partners at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD have curated 30 years of data from more than 8,000 ship cruises and 135 different institutions. If you'd like to get a closer look at these changes, watch our video tour of this new terrain.
We hope you enjoy diving deeper than ever in Google Earth!
Posted by Jamie Adams, Ocean Team
Google Earth ocean imagery
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding
Treasure hunter says he found $3B WWII wreck | The News Journal | delawareonline.com
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012120201054
Article in today's issue of the News Journal about the Port Nicholson wreck.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Limnology and Oceanography Abstracts
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Quantitative assessment of invasive species in lacustrine environments through benthic imagery analysis
Limnol. Oceanogr. Methods 10:65-74 (2012) | DOI: 10.4319/lom.2012.10.65
ABSTRACT: The establishment, spread, and impact of the invasive bivalve Corbicula fluminea (C. fluminea), in Lake Tahoe threatens native species distribution in the lake and, potentially, has long-term implications for water clarity. In 2009, UBC-Gavia, an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), was used as a platform to collect georeferenced imagery of the benthic regions of Lake Tahoe to determine the lake-wide distribution of C. fluminea. Images were collected in water depths less than 10 m at an approximately constant height above the bottom of 2 m. Images were processed using a semi-automated procedure to determine the ratio of the lakebed covered by exposed C. fluminea shells. A visual review was conducted on a subset of the images to determine presence of filamentous algae that has been observed in association with C. fluminea. Nearly 100 km of shoreline was covered over a 7-d period, and C. fluminea presence was reconfirmed in 4 regions and additional 10 regions identified. In regions where the presence of C. fluminea was confirmed, C. fluminea depth distribution was validated by comparing image detection counts and results from a benthic sediment grab sample survey. Three regions around the lake were identified to have filamentous green algae or charophyte species. It was impossible to identify species of the known filamentous algal taxa (Cladophora glomerata, Spirogyra spp., and Zygnema spp.). The collected imagery provides a synoptic view on species distribution within the lake that can be used for efficient monitoring of invasive species in freshwater and saltwater bodies.
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