[Infowarrior] - Google diving into 3D mapping of oceans

[Richard Forno]

 April 30, 2008 4:00 AM PDT
Google diving into 3D mapping of oceans
Posted by Elinor Mills | 1 comment
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9931412-7.html

We've got Google Earth and Google Sky. Next up will be a map of the world
below sea level--Google Ocean.

The company has assembled an advisory group of oceanography experts, and in
December invited researchers from institutions around the world to the
Mountain View, Calif., Googleplex. There, they discussed plans for creating
a 3D oceanographic map, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The tool--for now called Google Ocean, the sources say, though that name
could change--is expected to be similar to other 3D online mapping
applications. People will be able to see the underwater topography, called
bathymetry; search for particular spots or attractions; and navigate through
the digital environment by zooming and panning. (The tool, however, is not
to be confused with the "Google Ocean" project by France-based Magic
Instinct Software that uses Google Earth as a visualization tool for marine
data.)

Asked to comment on Google Ocean, a Google spokeswoman said the company had
"nothing to announce right now."

Oceanography researchers, however, say such a tool would be incredibly
useful.

"There is no real terrain or depth model for the ocean in Google Earth,"
said Tim Haverland, a geospatial application developer at the Fisheries
Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "You
can't get in a submarine and in essence fly through the water and explore
ocean canyons yet."

Google Ocean will feature a basic layer that shows the depth of the sea
floor and will serve as a spatial framework for additional data, sources
said, adding that Google plans to try to fill in some areas of the map with
high-resolution images for more detail.

Additional data will be displayed as overlying layers that depict phenomena
like weather patterns, currents, temperatures, shipwrecks, coral reefs, and
algae blooms, much like the National Park Service and NASA provide
additional data for Google Earth and Google Sky.

"Google will basically just provide the field and then everyone will come
flocking to it," predicted Stephen P. Miller, head of the Geological Data
Center at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "There will be peer
pressure to encourage people to get their data out there."

This is an image of a bathymetry map that shows the depth of the sea floor.
It is based on sparse ship soundings and satellite altimeter measurements of
subtle bumps and dips in the ocean surface which are produced by tiny
variations in the pull of gravity.
(Credit: David Sandwell and Walter Smith/Scripps Institute of Oceanography)

While satellite imagery has the entire globe covered, as well as a good
amount of known outer space, much less is known about the bodies of water
that cover about 70 percent of the planet. Only a small percentage of the
sea floor has been mapped in detail by sonar.

"It would take about 100 ship years to map the oceans at high resolution,"
said Dave Sandwell, a professor of geophysics at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography.

Sandwell speculated that Google will get at least some of the basic sea
floor data from Scripps' Predicted Depth Map. Created from ship sonar
soundings and satellites, it infers the depth of the sea floor based on the
tiny bumps and dips in the ocean's surface.

To bring more clarity to the sea floor, Sandwell and others said, Google
will likely use high-resolution grids from oceanographic institutions
showing the depths of select areas of the seas and paste them in. Data for
those grids, which cover a very small portion of the sea floor, are created
by ships using multibeam sonar.

One possible source for Google Ocean data are detailed "tiles" from
multibeam and predicted topography compiled by the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University. Tiles are high-resolution
sun-shaded images as well as digital elevation models covering the entire
global ocean that allow for interactivity similar to Google Earth, where you
can get different views by zooming in and out and by tilting the planet's
surface.

"Our application gets data from databases over the Internet without the user
having to know the name of the database or how to connect to it. Google
could talk to our databases," said William B. F. Ryan, an earth and
environmental studies professor at Columbia's LDEO.

Ryan cautioned that "Google would have to put the tiles on their servers
because their public of millions would bring the servers at Columbia
University to their knees."

On top of the depth map, and in addition to the select high-resolution tiled
areas, there will likely be various layers of specialized data from
different sources. For example, NOAA already has made public visual
information for Google Earth related to sea hotspots around coral reefs,
Gulf of Mexico marine debris, surface temperatures and wave heights in the
Great Lakes, and shipwrecks.

In addition to the "wow factor" Google Ocean will no doubt have for amateur
oceanographers, marine enthusiasts, and anyone fascinated by the movie
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the project has the potential to promote more
collaboration and advance research.

"We hope that one of the outcomes of Google Ocean will be an understanding
of how much remains to be explored," said Miller of Scripps. "We know far
more about the surface of Mars from a few weeks of radar surveying in orbit
than we know of the bottom of the ocean after two centuries."