AAGRUUK: the Arctic Archive for Geophysical Research
2005 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
The overarching goal of AAGRUUK is to promote collaborative research and multidisciplinary studies and foster new scientific insights for the Arctic Basin. To date the archive includes bathymetry, sidescan and subbottom data collected by the nuclear-powered submarines during the Science Ice Exercises (SCICEX), multibeam bathymetry collected by the USCGC HEALY and the Nathaniel B. Palmer, plus near-shore data around Barrow, Alaska as well as ice camp T3 and nuclear submarine soundings. Integration of the various bathymetric datasets has illustrated a number of problems, some of which aren't readily apparent until multiple overlapping datasets have been combined. Foremost among these are sounding errors caused by mapping while breaking ice and navigational misalignments in the SCICEX data. The former error is apparent in swath data that follow an irregular navigational track, indicating that a ship was unable to proceed directly from one point to another. Depths in these circuitous tracks depict a hummocky seafloor texture that is not observed in data covering the same region that were collected when there was open water. Navigation offsets in the SCICEX data are more likely to produce a checkboard pattern in the topography or even knife-edge ridges running down canyons. Despite the problems detected, the combined bathymetric database already shows strong potential for illuminating scientific investigations. For example, AAGRUUK integrated data for the Alaska margin have increased the coverage of any one individual dataset by several orders of magnitude. Analogous datasets for other arctic ridges including Gakkel Ridge, Lomonosov Ridge, Alpha-Mendeleev Ridge, the Chukchi Borderland and the Yermak Plateau are planned for release over the next two years.
0910 Data processing
3094 Instruments and techniques
4294 Instruments and techniques
Ocean Sciences [OS]
Earth and Space Informatics [IN]