Map Of The Ocean Floor Features

Northwest passage northern sea route.

Map of the ocean floor features.

This is expensive and time consuming so sonar maps are mostly only made of places where ships spend the most time. An international scientific team recently published a new map of the ocean floor based on earth s gravity field and it is a particularly useful tool. In recent years the polar ice pack has thinned allowing for increased navigation through these routes and raising the possibility of future. The maps were created through computer analysis and modeling of new satellite data from esa s cryosat 2 and from the nasa cnes jason 1 as well as older data from missions flown in the 1980s and 90s.

Map showing the geographic extent of the arctic ocean as a darker blue tint. Detailed depth contours provide the size shape and distribution of underwater features. Typically finely wrought ocean maps have been the result of extensive sonar. The map serves as a tool for performing scientific engineering marine geophysical and environmental studies that are required in the development of energy and marine resources.

The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur. Topographic maps of the sea floor. This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level. The under water topography maps have been developed by the study of ocean floor topography.

The northwest passage and northern sea route are two important seasonal waterways that connect the atlantic and pacific oceans. Among the new features they re now able to detect sandwell says are thousands of previously unknown seamounts between 1000 and 2000 meters tall dotting the ocean floor.