HR: 1330h
AN: U22A-0023    [PDF]
TI: The MapApp Virtual Seabed Explorer
AU: * Haxby, W F
EM: bill@ldeo.columbia.edu
AF: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AU: Ryan, W B
EM: billr@ldeo.columbia.edu
AF: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AU: Carbotte, S M
EM: carbotte@ldeo.columbia.edy
AF: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AB: MapApp is a downloadable, open source, prototype client application running in a desktop personal computing environment with the capability to explore two hundred million years of global ocean floor geology and geochemistry. It accomplishes the exploration and discovery in an integrated data environment of bathymetry, gravity, magnetic anomalies, reflection profiles, crustal ages, sediment composition, bedrock petrology and chemistry. Exploration is undertaken in a single visual interface with spawned windowpanes that communicate with each other. These panes provide the viewport for charting subsea landscapes, the spreadsheet for examination and manipulation of data discovered either by direct encounter or by query, the notebook for recording and downloading either original data or derived products, and dialog boxes to set parameters for models. All data are real measurements and their metadata reside in relational databases. The data come from decades of marine geological and geophysical surveys, coring, dredging, deep-sea drilling, and submersible dives. The lessons learned include the importance of rigorous data management, the need for quality-control of data accuracy, the discipline to keep the interface simple and intuitive, and the requirement to be functional over large scales of variable spatial and temporal resolution. A technical challenge is the programming difficulties presented by continuously changing versions of the PC client operating systems. The greatest scientific challenge is cost-effective mining of published textural data and convincing competitive researchers to contribute their data that is often already many years old. To retain and expand the user community of students, educators and researchers, we are discovering that it is equally as important to grow content as to add functionality.
UR: http://ocean-ridge.ldeo.columbia.edu/MapApp/MapAppJava.html
DE: 3010 Gravity
DE: 3025 Marine seismics (0935)
DE: 3045 Seafloor morphology and bottom photography
DE: 3655 Major element composition
DE: 7230 Seismicity and seismotectonics
SC: U
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting