Ocean mapping experts predict that “large influx of data” will soon reveal the hidden part of our planet – the state of the earth

Today is UN World Ocean Day, and this year’s theme is “Miracle: What is to sustain us”. One researcher exploring these miracles is marine geophysicist Vicki Ferrini, a senior research scientist and geoinformatics expert at Lamont-Doherty Earth Abtervatry, part of the Columbia Climate School. Ferrini is also responsible for the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Centers of the Nippon Foundation-Gebco Undersea 2030 Project (Undersea 2030), a global initiative aimed at completing maps of the seabed and providing publicly accessible maps of the seabed by 2030.

In the Q&A below, Fellini shares her views on current ocean research, the importance of international cooperation and hope for the future of this global field.

How do you describe it The current situation of marine science and research?

Currently, there is a real understanding that the way to accomplish this work is through collaboration. I think that between the decade of the ocean, we are in the midst of other initiatives like the 2030 Seabed, and researchers acknowledge that cross-sector collaboration and data integration will help us make a better, more complete view of the environment.

I think most of the events I attended this month, including Capitol Hill Ocean Week, the Explorer Furniture Club, the New York Ocean Technology Summit and the United Nations Ocean Conference, are really focusing on the topic – all of which are long-term partners we benefit from here in the United States, as well as new partners growing around the world. We really start to pool data from ocean research and recognize that data that may not be valuable to some people has value to others. Collecting, curating and sharing this data can have a big impact and a large-scale ROI.

wSo far, have we been able to map the percentage of oceans?

Sometime this month, we will announce the latest authoritative international numbers. But as of a year ago, it was 26%. This represents the efforts of countless individuals and organizations from all over the world. As we continue to work hard to map the global ocean, we are still working to figure out the best ways to fill the gap in data. We have been making progress, accelerating processing and integration, while new technologies are accelerating data acquisition. The most exciting thing for me is that we kind of inhabit the potential of a large number of data that not only reveals hidden parts of our planet, but also leads to discoveries and solutions that affect people.

Your ongoing project involves Utilize open source data and create public maps of the entire seabed by 2030. Can you talk about this, why is it so important?

If we go back to the origins of Lamont and some of the early work done here, we see the power of summing up the data, so the overall size is larger than the sum of the parts. When we work in the ocean, our personal observational footprints are often small, partly due to physics. For example, we can only see images within a very short distance or through water. But as we start bringing more data together, we get new insights. When we open data and really prioritize accessibility, we get a broader perspective. Not only can you use experts in the original data format that benefit. We can actually build data for data that people do interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. We start to gain new perspectives just by having more people on the table.

As we think nationwide, we have put in a lot of effort to ensure that the data collected by federal grants is accessible to the public. We made great discoveries on this data and we also developed incredible data systems and synthesis due to public access policies. This is a big sign of U.S. leadership and provides an increased return on investment. Now that we’re seeing a significant increase in this work internationally, we’re starting to unite global data. I think this is where there is a lot of power, potential and collaboration opportunities.

You mentioned several meetings on marine research that you will attend in the coming weeks. Why are these meetings so important?

Many of these events are about ocean exploration, mapping and general discovery. There has been a big shift in the way we work in the ocean field. There are so many more players now than in the past, which is awesome. With more participation from the private sector and more investment in philanthropy, we see more cooperation across sectors. It is indeed possible that we can scale in ways that have never been possible, not only because of the number of participants in marine enterprises, but also because of the increasing number of sensors and emerging technologies. The calculation pace also gets faster. All of these things together create a potential data flooding, and our challenge is to connect and manage it. We are all used to working in our lanes, and we tend not to consider adjacent lanes, but there is real power in the cross connections that can be made.

What do you want to take away from these national and international conferences?