Bookshelf Capturing the Digital Ocean Floor How GIS is used for mapping the undersea landscape Although oceans dominate the earth’s surface, the undersea world is far from fully explored. As Dawn J. Wright notes in the foreward to Ocean Globe, “95 percent of the global ocean floor remains either unmapped or mapped at a resolution that pales in comparison to the topographic maps that we have of Mars, Venus, and the dark side of the moon.” The researchers who contributed chapters to this new Esri Press book are working to improve our knowledge of the seafloor using GIS to manage, model, and map data to create a truly digital earth—one that includes the oceans that cover 70 percent of the earth’s surface. Esri Is Your Total Solution Provider Total solutions from Esri can provide technology you need at prices you can afford. Esri works with leading hardware vendors to provide bundled solutions that include ArcGIS® Server, ArcGIS Desktop, ArcPad®, and much more. For example, you can purchase an ArcGIS Data Appliance or a server, workstation, notebook, GPS Handheld, or Tablet PC bundled with ArcGIS software. Custom hardware-only configurations are also available to existing Esri customers. For more information on promotional offers, visit www.esri.com/hardware or call your local Esri office. Offers are updated frequently. Contributors to this book come to seafloor mapping from very different perspectives: from researchers concerned with tsunami modeling and forecasting to biologists studying sea turtles to scientists trying to determine sites for sustainable aquaculture. Each chapter describes a different aspect of marine research that relies on seafloor mapping and uses GIS to meet that need. An appendix by Albert E. Theberge Jr. provides a brief history of seafloor mapping. The first chapter, “Bathymetry—the art and science of seafloor modeling for modern applications,” coauthored by Timothy A. Kearns and Joe Breman, describes modern data capture techniques, methods of GIS data representation, and applications of bathymetric data and is of special interest to the general GIS practitioner as well as those specializing in marine GIS. Breman, also the editor of this volume, served as the editor for Marine Geography and a coauthor of Arc Marine: GIS for a Blue Planet, both published by Esri Press. Breman is the founder of International Underwater Explorations in Maui, Hawaii. He is a GIS architect with IT consulting firm Akimeka, LLC. He is also a professor of oceanography, guest lecturer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Sanctuary, and scuba diving instructor. Breman holds a master’s degree in marine sciences from the University of Haifa, Israel, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Although the target audience for Ocean Globe is college and graduate students, it’s accessible to anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of seafloor mapping. Esri Press, 2010, 294 pp. ArcUser Spring 2010 59 www.esri.com Copyright © 2009 Esri. All rights reserved.