The AuScope Far North Queensland survey

[Extract] The Australian Government's National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) intiative awarded AuScope (http://www.auscope.org.au) $42.8 million to support geoscience. AuScope will establish world-class infrastructure to characterise the structure and evolution of the Australian continent in a global context, from surface to core in space and time; and provide better understanding of the implications for natural resources, hazards and environment. The Earth Imagine and Structure (ANSIR) component of AuScope is focused on providing 3D databases of geologically important regions, which will be achieved through the collection of GeoTransects. AuScope will collaborate with, and use the services of ANSIR to achieve this.\ud \ud In August 2007, the Far North Queensland (FNQ) Tasman Line project became the first AuScope Tranverse to be acquired. This survey links with the Ga/GSQ Isa-Georgetown-Charters Towers survey and together, provide an exceptional opportunity to image this important region of Australia crust in three-dimensions. FNQ best preserves the Tasman Line, which is the boundary between the Precambrian craton of Australia, and the Phanerozoic Tasmanides to the east.\ud \ud The correlation between the lithospheric-scale structures evident in the seismic tomography images with mapped surface structures from observed geology suggests that this region is ideal for investigating the relationship between major upper crustal province boundaries and major features observed in geophysical images.\ud \ud The FNQ AuScope Reflection Traverse will address important questions regarding the nature of continental growth in eastern Australia. The raw field stack indicates a significant change in Moho depth on either side of the Tasman Line, considerable coherent reflectivity within the middle crust and evidence of shallow mid-crustal structures. However, the seismic imaging does not indicate teh presence of a single major structure that corresponds with the Tasman Line. The data now requires processing to enhance the seismic image within the upper crust

IBCSO v1 – The first release of the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) is an expert group of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) since the XXVIII SCAR Conference held on 30th July 2004 in Bremen Germany and a regional mapping project of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Ocean (GEBCO) operated under the joint auspices of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) (of UNESCO) and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO). The objective of IBCSO was to produce the first seamless bathymetric grid for the area south of latitude 60° S surrounding Antarctica. The IBCSO is going to be highly beneficial many scientific investigations. These include (a) interpretation of seabed geology, (b) the building of habitat models and maps, and (c) mapping and tracing of deep ocean current pathways. In addition the IBCSO is going to serve as an indispensable database for new nautical Charts in the Southern Ocean to improve the safety of navigation in Antarctic waters. After the inaugural meeting in 2004, the Editorial Board was then established at the 1st IBCSO Meeting at Santa Barbara in 2007 including representatives from several SCAR member countries. Since then, plenty of institutions holding bathymetric data in the Southern Ocean have been asked for a contribution to the IBCSO dataset. After the time consuming gathering, compilation and analyses of bathymetric data, finally the first version of the IBCSO is close to be released. Besides the grid an adjacent map has been developed, which is also going to be released in the near future. It is proposed to give an overview in what has been done in the IBCSO project in the last years for the creation of IBCSO v1. This will include acknowledgements to the data contributors and a short explanation of the working steps data acquisition, homogenization, cleaning and gridding. Previews of the new grid are going to demonstrate the improvement that has been achieved by IBCSO v1 compared to other bathymetric compilations like i.e. GEBCO 08. In addition a preview of the map will be presented

IBCSO V1.0 – New Bathymetry for the SCAR Community

The SCAR expert group on the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) was inaugurated in 2004. IBCSO is a regional mapping project of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Ocean (GEBCO) under the joint auspices of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) (of UNESCO) and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO). The project aim was to create the first seamless bathymetric compilation for the entire Southern Ocean south of 60°S. In 2013, finally the first Version of IBCSO was published in the Journal Geophysical Research Letters (Arndt et al., 2013). IBCSO Version 1.0 is a prime example for an international collaboration in Antarctic Science. Over 30 institutions from 15 countries contributed data and shared their expertise to generate the, so far, largest database of bathymetric data of the Southern Ocean. From this database a digital bathymetric model (DBM) was produced. The DBM covers the entire Antarctic Treaty area in a resolution of 500 m. It is available in several formats and projections. In addition, a new map has been created of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica and now is also available to the SCAR community. Both, the DBM and the map, can be downloaded free of charge from the IBCSO web site (www.ibcso.org). In my presentation I will give an overview of the IBCSO V1.0 compilation methods and highlight the improvements of the IBCSO DBM compared to global datasets. Furthermore, some tips and hints for the usage of IBCSO including the use of the Source Identifier grid (SID) will be given

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO)

The SCAR expert group on the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) was inaugurated in 2004. IBCSO is a regional mapping project of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Ocean (GEBCO) under the joint auspices of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) (of UNESCO) and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO). The project aim was to create the first seamless bathymetric compilation for the entire Southern Ocean south of 60°S. In 2013, finally the first Version of IBCSO was published in the Journal Geophysical Research Letters (Arndt et al., 2013). IBCSO Version 1.0 is a prime example for an international collaboration in Antarctic Science. Over 30 institutions from 15 countries contributed data and shared their expertise to generate the, so far, largest database of bathymetric data of the Southern Ocean. From this database a digital bathymetric model (DBM) was produced. The DBM covers the entire Antarctic Treaty area in a resolution of 500 m. It is available in several formats and projections. In addition, a new map has been created of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica and now is also available to the SCAR community. Both, the DBM and the map, can be downloaded free of charge from the IBCSO web site (www.ibcso.org). In my poster presentation I will present the map product of the IBCSO project and give information about its included data sets, its distribution and its design

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) Version 1.0

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) Version 1.0 is a new digital bathymetric model (DBM) portraying the seafloor of the circum-Antarctic waters south of 60° S. IBCSO is a regional mapping project of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO). IBCSO Version 1.0 DBM has been compiled from all available bathymetric data collectively gathered by more than 30 institutions from 15 countries. These data include multibeam and single beam echo soundings, digitized depths from nautical charts, regional bathymetric gridded compilations, and predicted bathymetry. Specific gridding techniques were applied to compile the DBM from the bathymetric data of different origin, spatial distribution, resolution, and quality. The IBCSO Version 1.0 DBM has a resolution of 500 x 500 m, based on a polar stereographic projection, and is publicly available together with a digital chart for printing from the project website (http://www.ibcso.org) and from the two data sets shown at the bottom of this page

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean – A new Map of Antarctica

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) is an expert group of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) since the XXVIII SCAR Conference held on 30th July 2004 in Bremen Germany and a regional Mapping project of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Ocean (GEBCO) operated under the joint auspices of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) (of UNESCO) and the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO). The objective of IBCSO was to produce a first seamless bathymetric grid for the area south of latitude 60° S covering the area of the Antarctic Treaty. The IBCSO is going to be a benefit for scientific purposes. These include (a) interpretation of seabed geology, (b) the building of habitat models and maps, and (c) mapping and tracing of deep ocean current pathways. In addition the IBCSO is going to serve as database for the development of new Electronic Nautical Charts (ENC) in the Southern Ocean to improve the safety of navigation in Antarctic waters. As the first version of the IBCSO grid is close to be released, so is the corresponding map. It is proposed to present the latest draft version, or even the final version, of the new IBCSO map. Besides the map itself, the process to achieve the first version of the IBCSO grid and map is going to be presented. This includes a description of the datasets used to create the map and a rough explanation of the working steps to generate the first grid version of the IBCSO

IBCSO v1.0 - A new view on Antarctic bathymetry

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) is the regional mapping project of GEBCO for the area south of 60° S, covering all Antarctic waters. The project is endorsed by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). The IBCSO steering committee is an Expert Group of the Standing Scientific Group of Geosciences (SSG-GS) of SCAR and works in collaboration with the IHO Hydrographic Commission on Antarctica (HCA). This year the compilation of IBCSO Version 1.0 was completed and the digital bathymetric model and a printable chart became available. For the compilation of the digital bathymetric model, data were contributed by more than 30 institutions from 15 countries. The database consists of about 4200 million points including 177 multibeam cruises, numerous singlebeam cruises, digitized soundings from nautical charts and parts of regional bathymetric compilations. IBCSO was gridded at a resolution of 500 x 500 m in polar stereographic projection with true scale at 65°S. For the gridding, a combination of the IBCAO V3 multi-resolution algorithm and a newly developed bending algorithm was applied. This bending tool minimized edge effects of multi-resolution gridding and allowed a smooth integration of the sounding grids with predicted bathymetry from global bathymetric data sets in areas without data points. On the printable chart of IBCSO, the new bathymetry is displayed together with up to date terrestrial datasets as Bedmap2 and ADD v6.0. Geographical names of undersea features were taken from the SCUFN gazetteer. The updated new bathymetry however required the relocation and adjustment of some undersea features. Additional geographical names were chosen from the SCAR composite gazetteer and the IHO S-23. The chart has a scale of 1 : 7,000,000 and is 1.0 x 1.2 meter in size