Abstract:
Varied needs have encouraged development of different technologies over time to meet those needs inclusive of technologies to map land, oceans and shorelines. Over the last decade significant effort has been put into fusing the area that joins the land maps to ocean benthic (ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean or a lake) maps so there is a continuous topographic view. There are several methods used to define the topography of underwater regions such as ship based single and multi-beam echo-sounder approaches with the latter providing complete high resolution coverage of the sea floor. (Committee on National Needs for Coastal Mapping and Charting, 2004). The goal of this thesis is to assess a group of common tools for mapping underwater topography, also known as bathymetry, for use in fusing the land topography to the sea floor topography. Data will be collected from web resources and unclassified geospatial databases for this research and key technical areas and weaknesses will be assessed to draw conclusions. The result of this analytic research identifies a recommended tool for shallow water bathymetry collection and provides recommended applications to support wave renewable energies.
