Scientists have developed a novel map of the entire world’s seafloor, displaying a brighter image of the compositions that actually formed the deepest, least-explored parts of the seafloor.
The researchers claimed that, the success was based on accessing two-intact streams of satellite data.
The recent map shows hundreds of deep, unexplored mountains that are growing from the seafloor, also known as seamounts. These seamounts are eventually appeared in the map, along with the novel hints of continents formation. The scientists have merged the existing data with the enhanced remote sensing instruments, which helps them to explore ocean expanding centers and small studies remote ocean basins.
Meanwhile, the researchers mapped the earthquakes too and found that the seamounts and the earthquakes are connected in one way or the other. These seamounts are once volcanoes and that is why researchers generally discovered nearby tectonically active plate boundaries, mid-ocean ridges and sub-ducting zones.
The researchers from California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) stated that, the novel map is as authentic as the previous one developed 20 years ago,
Don Rice, program director in the National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research, said that, “the team of researched have developed a powerful tool in order to explore the regional seafloor and geophysical processes.”
The map, which was developed by using a scientific model in order to capture the gravity measurements of the ocean seafloor, also extracts data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) CryoSat-2 satellite.
David Sandwell, lead author of the paper and geophysicist at SIO stated that, “Things you could see very clearly are the most common land-form on the planet, named as abyssal hills.”
Furthermore the researchers said that, the map offers a window within the tectonics of deep oceans. Alternatively, this map also offers a base for the upcoming Google’s ocean maps version. Researchers believed that it would cover large voids between shipboard depth profiles.
In earlier times, undetected features include newly exposed continental connections across South America and Africa and new evidence for seafloor spreading ridges in the Gulf of Mexico. The ridges were active 150mn years ago and are now buried by mile-thick layers of dregs.
The study was published in the ‘Science’ journal.
