Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Seminars

The David Packard Distinguished Lecturer Series presents...

Geodesy in the service of marine geophysics


Distinguished Lecturer Fred Spiess, Ph.D.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD

Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Pacific Forum - 3:00 p.m. 
Reception immediately following

This seminar will address the motivation, technology, and results of the development
of seafloor geodesy in two contexts:

 
  • Considering the potential contributions to understanding the generation and behavior of new crust at spreading centers.
  
  • Providing the seaward constraints essential to the  interpretation of terrestrial geodetic observations in coastal areas.
The emphasis of the presentation will be on approaches to measurement of the horizontal component of strain or seafloor deformation. The methods that have seen principal development fall into two categories-those that rely solely on underwater sound propagation and those that couple acoustic methods with space-based techniques. Hardware, at-sea operations, data processing, and results for both of these approaches will be discussed.

In both acoustic and non-acoustic approaches, however, there are interesting technological possibilities yet to be explored, and some of these will be mentioned, including integration of geodesy into the various potential seafloor observatory configurations.