Victor Vescovo’s US-based marine technology development company Caladan Oceanic has provided financial support and guidance to Greenwater Foundation to source new mapping data of the seafloor in coastal areas of Greenland using Satellite-Derived Bathymetry (SDB). This initiative will support the mission of The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO* Seabed 2030 Project, which aims to compile a map of the entire seafloor by the year 2030 and has already contributed SDB data to countries including the United States, Japan, Canada, Kenya, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea, Tonga, and numerous other Together, these parties have contracted with the world leader in mapping the seafloor using satellite data in the visible and other spectra of light, TCarta of Denver, Colorado. Over the past year, never before has so much coastal satellite-derived bathymetry been charitably contributed in a single contribution to Seabed 2030. The minimum resolution of the contributed imagery is 100m but some of the contributed data is as high-resolution as 10 meters to provide even higher safety of navigation data to the local communities. TCarta has the ability to produce even finer imagery, as high as 0.5 meters in resolution, for specifically commissioned commercial products as well as marine asset or habitat mapping. The project has contributed 11,000 square kilometers to Greenland at an average resolution of 10 meters including SDB data of key cities of Nuuk and Narsaq and will also be providing more general 100-meter resolution data for the region. The data was provided to Karl Brix Zinglersen (Head of Department, Department of Environment and Minerals Pinngortitaleriffik, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources) and will be used to provide more awareness about potential coastal hazards, enable more precise fisheries and resource management, and for other marine scientific uses. SDB offers the benefits of an extremely short timeframe from collection to delivery when compared with boat or airplane-based methods, making this an ideal technology for mapping coastal areas in Greenland where repeated mapping with aircraft is costly and can take years to process and release the data. SDB also provides the lowest carbon footprint per square kilometer mapped compared to aircraft or ship-derived mapping. There are no international restrictions on the use of publicly available satellite data to provide such derived bathymetric data to open-source projects like GEBCO. Greenland has been informed of this project and received the data generated by the project prior to the date of this release. Victor Vescovo, of Caladan Oceanic, stated: “It is very exciting to use existing space technology and open-source data to generate seafloor maps of coastal areas where there were none publicly available before. I look forward to continuing this charitable effort to generate more coastal area maps of the world’s countries which are difficult to map and then provide them to GEBCO’s open-source database and to the world community.” “One can’t understand the global climate, ecosystems, manage resources, and safely navigate the ocean without knowing what is there. Right now, 74% of the ocean is completely unmapped. We have detailed maps of the moon and Mars, but we have somehow skipped over half of our own planet. The ocean is hard; hard to “see” through the water, hard on equipment, hard on people, and therefore it is expensive to map. By leveraging new technology to push the price of mapping the seafloor down, we can finally start to see what it is that we need to understand and protect.” said Commander G. Mark Miller NOAA (ret.), Co-Founder of Greenwater Foundation. Kyle Goodrich, Chief Executive Officer of TCarta added: “SDB is the only ocean mapping technology that can rapidly and repeatedly map coastal areas. Satellite Derived Bathymetry offers unique capabilities within ocean mapping technologies. Its cost effectiveness and repeatability being most notable and pertinent in areas such as Greenland.” Karl Zinglersen said: “The vast coastline and waters around Greenland are generally poorly mapped. Coordinated and collaborative scientific cruises conducted by scientists and institutions from US, Canada, Greenland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and other countries have mapped many of the deep fjords and seas, but shallow waters remain difficult to measure. SDB analysis is a key method to accomplish this and any project exploring and testing the capabilities of this method are welcomed. To local and visiting seafarers in Greenland, the shallow waters, abrupt changes in bathymetry, and numerous submerged rocks, present dangerous hazards to navigation and safety where search and rescue capabilities are often far away. For these people all new knowledge and maps can be lifesaving. To natural sciences, the shallow waters are of great interest. Here are resources of sand used for concrete in construction projects and glacial flour, which might have a future commercial value in agriculture as a nutrient source. The coastal zone is home to seaweed Kelp forests and an ecosystem including juvenile fish and shellfish growing up there to later become a commercial resource in the fishing industry, crucial to Greenland’s economy.” Finally, Jamie McMichael-Phillips, Director of The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project added: “Our mission at Seabed 2030 is made possible thanks to the work of our partners, including those that leverage cutting edge technology to advance our understanding of the ocean. “This collaboration exemplifies how satellite derived bathymetry can significantly expand our knowledge of previously unmapped coastal areas. We are grateful for this invaluable contribution, which brings us one step closer to realising our vision of a complete map of the seafloor by 2030.” |
