Using Sonar To Map The Ocean Floor

There are three tools used to map the ocean floor sonar satellites and submersibles.

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. The technique first used by german scientists in the early 20th century uses sound waves bounced off the ocean bottom. 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. This is achieved by explicitly taking into account the sss operation as follows.

The goal of this study is to generate high resolution sea floor maps using a side scan sonar sss. 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. First the raw sensor data is corrected by means of a physics based sss model.

Mapping techniques have improved over time but only the use of sound sonar has permitted large scale high resolution seafloor measurements. Sonar short for sound navigation and ranging is helpful for exploring and mapping the ocean because sound waves travel farther in the water than do radar and light waves. Mapping the ocean floor with echo sounding echo sounding is the key method scientists use to map the seafloor today. 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.