Topography of the Ocean Floor

G131 HOME

INFORMATION

SCHEDULE

RESOURCES

EXERCISES

EXERCISES
Examination and evaluation of real-time oceanographic data on the internet

PRELIMINARY

I: TECTONICS
and OCEAN BASINS

Earthquakes and Plate Tectonics

Spreading Rates

CA Earthquakes

Volcanoes

Topography of the Ocean Floor

History of Ocean Basins

II: OCEANS/ ATMOSPHERIC GASES

III: OCEAN/
ATMOSPHERE DYNAMICS

IV: INTEGRATED TOPICS

TOPOGRAPHY OF THE OCEAN FLOOR

Topography of the Ocean Floor:

Aim: to recognize and explore the characteristics of a variety of features of the ocean floor, and aspects of their relationship to plate tectonic processes.
Websites for global topographic maps:

Website for generation of 3-D maps of ocean floor topography:

http://cer.ori.u-tokyo.ac.jp/toolmap/3d-bottom.html

Contents: listings of links to topographic maps.

individual regional maps of seafloor bathymetry.
user-specified 3-D images of seafloor topography.

Procedures for Maps of Ocean Floor Bathymetry:

Two separate sites provide global maps of ocean floor topography:

global seafloor bathymetry (preferred website with latitude and longitude)
gridded ocean floor topography

The first site provides a large bathymetric image of the entire Earth's surface:

http://topex.ucsd.edu/marine_topo/gif_images/global_topo_large.gif

A smaller version of this map with 16 clickable regions is found here:

http://topex.ucsd.edu/marine_topo/

Each regional map can be separately viewed as a thumbnail and selected here or here .
An explanation of the methodology used to compile the bathymetric map is given at:

http://topex.ucsd.edu/marine_topo/text/topo.html

The color scale for the bathymetric maps is given in the preceeding link and also here:

http://topex.ucsd.edu/marine_grav/gif_images/predict.gif

The second set of images is one of many views of the Earth that can be produced from the NOAA National Data Center.
The color scale for the altitude/bathymetry of the image is given at:

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/relief_slides2.html

Procedures for Generating 3-D Images of the Ocean Floor:

The procedures for this part of the exercise are described on the first page of questions relating to user-generated 3-D images.

Introduction to Questions on the Topography of the Ocean Floor:

A separate page provides descriptions of bathymetric features of the ocean floor.
The questions are outlined in three separate tables:

question sets for investigation of plan views ( this page )
a question set for exploration of 3-D views ( following pages )

Reminder: you should submit your answers via oncourse .

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