Using Sonar To Map The Ocean Floor

Sonar single beam.

Using sonar to map the ocean floor.

By the 1920s the coast and geodetic survey an ancestor of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration s national ocean service was using sonar to map deep water. Mapping the ocean floor with echo sounding echo sounding is the key method scientists use to map the seafloor today. First the raw sensor data is corrected by means of a physics based sss model. There are three tools used to map the ocean floor sonar satellites and submersibles.

This is achieved by explicitly taking into account the sss operation as follows. Mapping techniques have improved over time but only the use of sound sonar has permitted large scale high resolution seafloor measurements. The first modern breakthrough in sea floor mapping came with the use of underwater sound projectors called sonar which was first used in world war i. The technique first used by german scientists in the early 20th century uses sound waves bounced off the ocean bottom.

Second the data is projected to the sea floor. Sonar is a type of electronic depth sounding equiptment made in the 1920 s it is an acronym for sound navigation and ranging. The goal of this study is to generate high resolution sea floor maps using a side scan sonar sss. Noaa scientists primarily use sonar to develop nautical charts locate underwater hazards to navigation search for and map objects on the sea floor such as shipwrecks and map the sea floor itself.