Using Sonar To Map The Ocean Floor

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.

Using sonar to map the ocean floor.

Tools used to map the ocean floor today s technology lets scientists to study the ocean in a quicker and precise way. The goal of this study is to generate high resolution sea floor maps using a side scan sonar sss. Sonar is a type of electronic depth sounding equiptment made in the 1920 s it is an acronym for sound navigation and ranging. 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. There are three tools used to map the ocean floor sonar satellites and submersibles. Sonar single beam. This is achieved by explicitly taking into account the sss operation as follows.

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. 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. First the raw sensor data is corrected by means of a physics based sss model.