The Nippon Foundation—GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project: The Quest to See the World’s Oceans Completely Mapped by 2030

Despite many of years of mapping effort, only a small fraction of the world ocean’s seafloor has been sampled for depth, greatly limiting our ability to explore and understand critical ocean and seafloor processes. Recognizing this poor state of our knowledge of ocean depths and the critical role such knowledge plays in understanding and maintaining our planet, GEBCO and the Nippon Foundation have joined forces to establish the Nippon Foundation GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, an international effort with the objective of facilitating the complete mapping of the world ocean by 2030. The Seabed 2030 Project will establish globally distributed regional data assembly and coordination centers (RDACCs) that will identify existing data from their assigned regions that are not currently in publicly available databases and seek to make these data available. They will develop protocols for data collection (including resolution goals) and common software and other tools to assemble and attribute appropriate metadata as they assimilate regional grids using standardized techniques. A Global Data Assembly and Coordination Center (GDACC) will integrate the regional grids into a global grid and distribute to users world-wide. The GDACC will also act as the central focal point for the coordination of common data standards and processing tools as well as the outreach coordinator for Seabed 2030 efforts. The GDACC and RDACCs will collaborate with existing data centers and bathymetric compilation efforts. Finally, the Nippon Foundation GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project will encourage and help coordinate and track new survey efforts and facilitate the development of new and innovative technologies that can increase the efficiency of seafloor mapping and thus make the ambitious goals of Seabed 2030 more likely to be achieved

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) Version 3.0

[1] The International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) released its first gridded bathymetric compilation in 1999. The IBCAO bathymetric portrayals have since supported a wide range of Arctic science activities, for example, by providing constraint for ocean circulation models and the means to define and formulate hypotheses about the geologic origin of Arctic undersea features. IBCAO Version 3.0 represents the largest improvement since 1999 taking advantage of new data sets collected by the circum-Arctic nations, opportunistic data collected from fishing vessels, data acquired from US Navy submarines and from research ships of various nations. Built using an improved gridding algorithm, this new grid is on a 500 meter spacing, revealing much greater details of the Arctic seafloor than IBCAO Version 1.0 (2.5 km) and Version 2.0 (2.0 km). The area covered by multibeam surveys has increased from ∼6% in Version 2.0 to ∼11% in Version 3.0

Seafloor mapping – the challenge of a truly global ocean bathymetry

Detailed knowledge of the shape of the seafloor is crucial to humankind. Bathymetry data is critical for safety of navigation and is used for many other applications. In an era of ongoing environmental degradation worldwide, bathymetry data (and the knowledge derived from it) play a pivotal role in using and managing the world’s oceans in a way that is in accordance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14 – conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. However, the vast majority of our oceans is still virtually unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. Only a small fraction of the seafloor has been systematically mapped by direct measurement. The remaining bathymetry is predicted from satellite altimeter data, providing only an approximate estimation of the shape of the seafloor. Several global and regional initiatives are underway to change this situation. This paper presents a selection of these initiatives as best practice examples for bathymetry data collection, compilation and open data sharing as well as the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO (The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans) Seabed 2030 Project that complements and leverages these initiatives and promotes international collaboration and partnership. Several non-traditional data collection opportunities are looked at that are currently gaining momentum as well as new and innovative technologies that can increase the efficiency of collecting bathymetric data. Finally, recommendations are given toward a possible way forward into the future of seafloor mapping and toward achieving the goal of a truly global ocean bathymetry

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean Version 4.0

Funder: The Nippon Foundation of Japan, grant Seabed 2030Funder: Open access funding provided by Stockholm UniversityAbstract: Bathymetry (seafloor depth), is a critical parameter providing the geospatial context for a multitude of marine scientific studies. Since 1997, the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) has been the authoritative source of bathymetry for the Arctic Ocean. IBCAO has merged its efforts with the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO-Seabed 2030 Project, with the goal of mapping all of the oceans by 2030. Here we present the latest version (IBCAO Ver. 4.0), with more than twice the resolution (200 × 200 m versus 500 × 500 m) and with individual depth soundings constraining three times more area of the Arctic Ocean (∼19.8% versus 6.7%), than the previous IBCAO Ver. 3.0 released in 2012. Modern multibeam bathymetry comprises ∼14.3% in Ver. 4.0 compared to ∼5.4% in Ver. 3.0. Thus, the new IBCAO Ver. 4.0 has substantially more seafloor morphological information that offers new insights into a range of submarine features and processes; for example, the improved portrayal of Greenland fjords better serves predictive modelling of the fate of the Greenland Ice Sheet

The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean Version 2 (IBCSO v2)

The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is a region that is key to a range of climatic and oceanographic processes with worldwide effects, and is characterised by high biological productivity and biodiversity. Since 2013, the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO) has represented the most comprehensive compilation of bathymetry for the Southern Ocean south of 60°S. Recently, the IBCSO Project has combined its efforts with the Nippon Foundation – GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project supporting the goal of mapping the world’s oceans by 2030. New datasets initiated a second version of IBCSO (IBCSO v2). This version extends to 50°S (covering approximately 2.4 times the area of seafloor of the previous version) including the gateways of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Antarctic circumpolar frontal systems. Due to increased (multibeam) data coverage, IBCSO v2 significantly improves the overall representation of the Southern Ocean seafloor and resolves many submarine landforms in more detail. This makes IBCSO v2 the most authoritative seafloor map of the area south of 50°S

The link between chronic conditions and urinary incontinence

Urinary incontinence is commonly associated with chronic diseases. Strong associations exist between continence problems, impairments outside the lower urinary tract and activity limitations. These associations also occur in diseases that directly affect the neurological control mechanism for continence. The World Health Organization (WHO) International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) provides a paradigm for thinking about disease and its consequences, including urinary incontinence. This paper reviews the association between disease, impairment and activity limitation for some common chronic diseases and for older adults. The complexity of the relationships between different aspects of urinary incontinence has important implications for the assessment and management of urinary incontinence in chronic disease and for older adults

Geophysical Synthesis of the Indian/Southern Oceans: Part 1, the Southwest Indian Ocean

Commencing in 1987, an international panel of sea-going scientists has collaborated in compiling and interpreting all available sea floor topographic, magnetic and satellite-derived gravity data in the Indian Ocean overall, from sow to 1660E and from Africa-Asia-Australia south to Antarctica. The purpose of the project is to evaluate uniformly comparable data from academic and agency sources, to provide large scale working charts of these compilations and to produce a detailed digital state-of-the art tectonic chart for the entire Indian and contiguous Southern Oceans.The compilations and the tectonic chart will be used to reconstruct the history of the seafloor and the continents surrounding these oceans. This technical report, Part 1 of the project, provides the data compilation plots and the tectonic chart for the southwestern Indian Ocean which lies between southern Africa and Antarctica. Lying between 31 o S and 71 o S, and sow and 71 OE, it represents almost one third of the entire area of the Indian Ocean and the contiguous Southern Oceans.The topographic contours portray the shape and relief of the sea floor itself. They also display well the long-wavelength depth anomalies such as oceanic plateaus and swells. The satellite-derived gravity field does not resolve local fine detail but reflects the longer wavelength (> 20 km) density contrasts beneath the oceans. Like the bathymetry, it is dominated in the Southwest Indian Ocean by the spreading ridge axis, the active transform faults and the major fracture zones. It also reveals the sediment-covered extension of these fracture zones and the basement relief of the oceanic plateaus. Identification of magnetic anomaly data permits the determination of the age of the oceanic crust. The three data bases, combined and abstracted into a tectonic chart, together present a very clear summary of the present overall morphology of the ocean floor and also reveal the masking effects of sedimentation. They present a unique data base from which to reconstruct the history of the seafloor in the southwestern Indian Ocean

Geophysical Synthesis of the Indian/Southern Oceans: Part 1, the Southwest Indian Ocean

Commencing in 1987, an international panel of sea-going scientists has collaborated in compiling and interpreting all available sea floor topographic, magnetic and satellite-derived gravity data in the Indian Ocean overall, from sow to 1660E and from Africa-Asia-Australia south to Antarctica. The purpose of the project is to evaluate uniformly comparable data from academic and agency sources, to provide large scale working charts of these compilations and to produce a detailed digital state-of-the art tectonic chart for the entire Indian and contiguous Southern Oceans.The compilations and the tectonic chart will be used to reconstruct the history of the seafloor and the continents surrounding these oceans. This technical report, Part 1 of the project, provides the data compilation plots and the tectonic chart for the southwestern Indian Ocean which lies between southern Africa and Antarctica. Lying between 31 o S and 71 o S, and sow and 71 OE, it represents almost one third of the entire area of the Indian Ocean and the contiguous Southern Oceans.The topographic contours portray the shape and relief of the sea floor itself. They also display well the long-wavelength depth anomalies such as oceanic plateaus and swells. The satellite-derived gravity field does not resolve local fine detail but reflects the longer wavelength (> 20 km) density contrasts beneath the oceans. Like the bathymetry, it is dominated in the Southwest Indian Ocean by the spreading ridge axis, the active transform faults and the major fracture zones. It also reveals the sediment-covered extension of these fracture zones and the basement relief of the oceanic plateaus. Identification of magnetic anomaly data permits the determination of the age of the oceanic crust. The three data bases, combined and abstracted into a tectonic chart, together present a very clear summary of the present overall morphology of the ocean floor and also reveal the masking effects of sedimentation. They present a unique data base from which to reconstruct the history of the seafloor in the southwestern Indian Ocean