The National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) (described in the January 17, 1997 Scout Report) provides online images of US Northeast and Southeast Atlantic Coastal Relief Models. The Coastal Relief Gridded database "provides the first comprehensive view of the US Coastal Zone; one that extends from the coastal state boundaries to as far offshore as the NOS hydrographic data will support a...
The Website for GEBCO, the most comprehensive Bathymetric Chart of the world from UNESCO, and the International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO), now includes a gazetteer of undersea feature names. The downloadable Excel spreadsheet gives names and geographic data on undersea canyons, troughs, seamounts, banks, rises, channels, fracture zones, etc. The .pdf file gives the guidelines used in...
A new hydrothermal vent field, which scientists have dubbed "The Lost City," was discovered unexpectedly earlier this month on an undersea mountain at 30 degrees North on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This news item from the National Science Foundation discusses the discovery made by a team of researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Duke University, and the University of Washington during...
A cooperative effort between nineteen oceanographic institutions and government agencies that maintain marine sample repositories to provide information on the contents of their collections to help researchers locate marine sediment and rock material for further analysis," states the homepage of this site provided by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) National...
Another informative offering from the US Geological Survey is the Marine Geology: Research Beneath the Sea Web site. Visitors can read about the agency's Marine Geology program which "strives to increase our understanding of the geology of the lands covered by water." Topics include methods and equipment used for the research, plate tectonics, resources in the marine realm, predicting effects of...
Data from Leg 176 (Hole 735B) of the Ocean Drilling Program (ODB) is now available online. The Ocean Drilling Program (described in the August 5, 1998 Scout Report for Science & Engineering) conducts basic research into the "history of the ocean basins and the nature of the crust beneath the floor." ODP is funded principally by the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with large contributions...
This paper from the journal GEOLOGY, "Potential for large-scale submarine slope failure and tsunami generation along the US mid-Atlantic coast," by Neal W. Driscoll, Jeffrey K. Weissel, and John A. Goff, has made headlines in recent weeks for its claim that the outer continental shelf off the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina "might be in the initial stages of large-scale slope failure." Such...
The World Data Center-A for Marine Geology & Geophysics, located at the National Geophysical Data Center, USA, is accessible through the Web and includes a forms interface allowing full on-line inventory searches of all Marine Geology & Geophysics Division holdings.