In the wavelength band 15 to 200 km, variations in gravity anomaly are highly correlated with seafloor topography. Since many southern ocean areas and some northern ocean areas are sparsely surveyed, these new satellite altimeter data reveal many previously unsurveyed features such as ridge axes, seamounts and fracture zones. Thus for an accurate prediction, it is essential to go back to the raw ship soundings. This Ship Track Map has been sectioned into 16 clickable regions. Clicking on a given region will produce an expanded view of that portion of the map.
Data quality is the most important aspect of bathymetric prediction.
High resolution satellite gravity data is needed not only to interpolate among the sparse soundings but also to identify which soundings are bad. Many soundings from remote areas of the oceans were collected before shipboard computers and satellite navigation were available. Moreover, all of the ship sounding data were collected over a 30 year period on a variety of ships from many countries and with many different chief scientists aboard. GPS-navigated multibeam data are reliable. The high resolution gravity fields provides the information needed to assess the accuracy of the ship sounding data.