The ocean floors of our Earth will soon no longer hold any secrets for us, according to recent discoveries from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission. NASA and the French National Center for Space Studies were keen to make an initial assessment, while the mission is supposed to last three years. As the researchers explain in an article published December 12 in Science and reported by Live Science, the data collected in one year by SWOT already provide a clearer picture of the ocean floor than that collected by ships or older satellites in the over the last thirty years.
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To detect underwater features, SWOT measures the height of the ocean surface. Despite appearances, this surface is not flat, explains Dr. Yao Yu, co-author of the study and a geographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The gravitational pull of various underwater structures causes water to accumulate at their tops, forming spreading humps. Variations in the height of the sea surface therefore make it possible to deduce what lies deep beneath the surface.
Better understand marine biodiversity
The team focused on three types of underwater formations: abyssal hills, small seamounts and continental margins. Abyssal hills, which take the form of parallel ridges a few hundred meters high, are generated by the movements of tectonic plates. The SWOT data allowed scientists to spot a few places where the direction of the ridges changed, suggesting that the tectonic plate that formed them also changed the direction of its movement at some point.
The researchers also studied underwater volcanoes, which have a considerable impact on biodiversity. Thousands of previously unknown underwater volcanoes less than 1,000 meters high have been discovered using SWOT data. “We are also very interested in continental margins, because ocean currents and tides bring nutrients and sediments from land to the ocean and influence the biodiversity and ecology of the coastal zone,” Yao Yu said.
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France