Active Tectonics & Seafloor Mapping Lab

Marine Habitat Program

Current Research Projects:

Our marine habitat research interests and activities include:

Seafloor mapping for the study of marine benthic habitats of the Pacific Northwest is our primary focus.  We maintain the Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) geological basemaps for Washington and Oregon.  Our students are currently working on new habitat mappings for the Oregon and Washington Territorial Sea areas.

Advanced technologies for integrating 4-D oceanographic and fisheries datasets have long been an interest of our lab.  We've provided 2-D, 3-D, and fly-through imagery for several film and print segments.

Completed Research Projects:

A few of our recent accomplishments:

EFH, Washington and Oregon Surficial Geologic Habitat (SGH) maps (2005)

California Continental Borderland, SGH maps for shallow submarine banks (2004, 2005, 2006)

Oregon Territorial Sea Habitat Map (2008)

Advanced Technology Reserach Cruises (2005, 2006)

 

PaCOOS Data Portal

The Active Tectonics & Seafloor Mapping Lab is working cooperatively with the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center to provide ecosystem observing datato the science community and the public through the Pacific Coast Ocean Observing System (PaCOOS) a component of the Integrated Ocean Observing System.  The PaCOOS West Coast Habitat Server is an online access point for scientific datasets related to the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem.  We serve data to the ecosystem observing backbone of IOOS and to the public through the implementation of DMAC compliant services (OPeNDAP) as well as internet map services.  The West Coast Habitat Server site includes an interactive map viewer with advanced spatial query tools, a searchable metadata portal, and a custom interface to the NOAA Habitat Use Database.  Online since 2005, we are actively maintaining the portal and continualy adding new datasets.

PaCOOS Splash

Go to http://pacoos.coas.oregonstate.edu to access data!

In The News: click here!

 
Oregon Territorial Sea Mapping

Finally!  A coast wide and comprehensive thematic map of seabed habitats for the Oregon Territorial Sea!

Rocky reefOregon is currently in the process of citing a network of Marine Reserves (MRV's) and Marine Protected Areas (MPA's) in it's state waters, however only about 5% of the Territorial Sea has been mapped with modern acoustic methods.  Reserve nomination, evaluation, and implementations will occur long before the remaining 95% of the area is covered with multibeam and sidescan sonar.  Melinda Agapito (MS 2008) developed a map of seabed surficial geological character using early leadline survey smooth sheets (previously undigitized data), aerial kelp distributions (hard substrate proxy), seabed roughness, and even aerial photos of shallow water to aid the reserves effort.

 

Go to oregonmarinereserves dot net to find out more about Oregon's Process.

 
Version 3 Surficial Geologic Habitat Maps for Oregon and Washington

Coming Soon, Very Soon!

We've been busy updating the Washington and Oregon Surgicial Geologic Habitat maps this year.  Changes include updated interpretations for the territorial sea areas of both states as well as some significant remapping of mid and outer shelf habitats for Oregon.  The updates are based on the work of Andy Lanier's interpretation of R/V Thomas Thompson Simrad EM 300 multibeam data collected between Nehalem Bank and Daisy Bank as well as interpretations from Melinda Agapito's and keith Karageorge's work on territorial sea habitats of Oregon and Washington.

A beta release of new map product, Version 3.0, has been pre-released to collaborators and contributors.  The final release should be available to all this month (October, 2008).  

 


 
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