17/11/2014

Geology IN: Satellites reveal hidden features at the bottom of Earth's seas

Satellites reveal hidden features at the bottom of Earth's seas

A new marine gravity model of the central Indian Ocean, which is poorly charted and includes the presumed crash site of Malaysia Airlines
Flight 370. The red dots represent strong earthquakes, which together outline the locations of current seafloor spreading ridges.

Oceanographers have a saying: Scientists know more about the surface of Mars than they do about the landscape at
the bottom of our oceans. But that may soon change. Using data from satellites that measure variations in Earths
gravitational field, researchers have found a new and more accurate way to map the sea floor. The improved
resolution has already allowed them to identify previously hidden featuresincluding thousands of extinct
volcanoes more than 1000 meters tallas well as piece together some lingering uncertainties in Earths ancient
history.
Roughly 90% of the deep-ocean sea floor remains unmapped, a fact thats been thrown into sharp relief by
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Geology IN: Satellites reveal hidden features at the bottom of Earth's seas

searchers inability to locate Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which is thought to have crashed somewhere in the
southern Indian Ocean in March. What maps do exist have been largely generated by instruments such as shipbased multibeam sonar systems, which take soundings of the depth to the sea floor as they crisscross select areas
of ocean. That leaves big holes hundreds of kilometers across with no data, says David Sandwell, a geophysicist
at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.
Satellite-based radar altimeters can help fill in those gaps. These instruments bounce signals off the surface of the
ocean as they pass over it multiple times a day. When corrected for wave heights and tides, the repeated pinging of
the ocean surface builds up a picture of its overall topography, its bumps and valleys. Those bumps at the surface
of the ocean, Sandwell says, reflect featuressuch as seamounts or extinct volcanoeson the sea floor below. A
seamount, for example, exerts a gravitational pull, and warps the sea surface outward, he says. So we can map
the bottom of the ocean indirectly, using sea-surface topography.
Right now, four satellites have high-resolution radar altimeter data sets available to scientists: the U.S. Navys aging
Geosat and Geosat Follow-On missions; the European Space Agencys (ESAs) ERS-1; Jason-1, a joint mission
between NASA and CNES, the French national space research center; and CryoSat-2, the youngest of the four, an
ESA satellite launched in 2010 to study the polar ice caps. Until recently, seafloor gravity maps relied on
declassified data from the Geosat missions (launched in 1985 and 1998, respectively) and on ERS-1 data. But those
instruments were unable to resolve some features of tectonic plate boundaries, particularly if they were covered by
sediment layers. We could see ridges and transform [faults] that werent buried by sedimentbut anything under
sediments was basically blurry.
But now, new data from Jason-1 and CryoSat-2 are sharpening the focus. The difference, Sandwell says, is like the
difference between ordinary and high-definition television. In particular, CryoSat-2s high-range precision altimeter
as well as its 4 years of amassed data (each of the other missions collected data for only a couple of years)
makes it the star of the show. Using those dataas well as significantly improved analysis techniquesSandwell
and his colleagues built a new marine gravity model that is at least twice as accurate as existing models, they report
online today in Science.
Among the new features theyre now able to detect, Sandwell says, are thousands of previously unknown
seamounts between 1000 and 2000 meters tall dotting the ocean floor. They also discovered an 800-kilometer-long
now-extinct (i.e., no longer actively spreading) ridge in the South Atlantic Ocean that formed after Africa and North
America rifted apart. The team also reports the exact location of a now-extinct seafloor spreading ridge, a zone
where two tectonic plates began pulling apart 180 million years ago to form the deep basin that became the Gulf of
Mexico. That was a surprise to meyoud think everyone would know everything about the Gulf because its so
well-studied, he says. Of course, people knew it opened from seafloor spreading, but they didnt know exactly
where the ridge and transform faults were. Those features were so deeply buried by sediment that the gravity
signals were extremely faint.
The authors have dramatically improved the signal-to-noise ratio in their marine gravity grid, allowing very subtle
features to be resolved, says geophysicist Paul Wessel, a geophysicist at the University of Hawaii, M
anoa, who was
not involved in the study. This work brings home the importance of collecting new data, as well as applying expert
processing to older datasqueezing out more information than was thought possible.
Oil companiesand, Sandwell notes, the Chinese government, which is exploring the South China Seaare keenly
interested in the new gravity maps as a reconnaissance tool. Oil and gas exploration focuses along continental
margins where the sea floor is relatively flat under thick layers of accumulated sediment, and the new gravity maps
make it possible to see the sediment basins that are possible reservoirs.
One thing the new maps wont do, Sandwell notes, is locate the missing Malaysia Airlines jet. Satellite-based
instrumentseven the high-range precision radar altimeter aboard CryoSat-2just dont have high enough
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Geology IN: Satellites reveal hidden features at the bottom of Earth's seas

resolution to spot a plane-sized object in the vast, 60,000-square-kilometer swath of southern Indian Ocean now
identified as the priority search area. If you want to find an airplane, youve got to resolve to maybe 10 meters,
he says. Even the best a ships multibeam sonar can do is about 100 meters [resolution]. The Australian Transport
Safety Bureau, which is leading the search for the lost plane, last week released new data from its bathymetric
survey of the priority search area, which used shipboard multibeam sonar; when the survey is complete, searchers
will use towed deep-sea submersibles to continue the search, scanning the sea floor at even greater resolutions.
But there are more than enough new seafloor data from Jason-1 and CryoSat-2 to keep the marine science
community busy for the next 5 years, Sandwell says. Its a lot of new information, and its all very detailedand
buried in there, somewhere, are probably hundreds of new discoveries waiting to be uncovered.

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