Atlas of the Deep-Water Seabed: Ireland

• Atlas Launch
• Atlas Description
• Atlas Media Coverage
• Access to Atlas Data
• Purchase Atlas

Atlas Launch

The Minister for Natural Resources, Conor Lenihan launched a new and innovative marine publication, the Atlas of the Deep Water Seabed of Ireland, at Dublin Castle on the 4th November 2010.

This Atlas, by prestigious Scientific publisher Springer, is a detailed compilation of stunning three-dimensional imagery featuring the submarine canyons, underwater mountains and abyssal plains that make up Ireland’s seabed territory, an area ten times that of our land mass.

The Atlas was produced by researchers at University College Cork, working on marine datasets with the collaboration of GSI, supported by INFOMAR and drawing on a wide range of sources for photography that bring this hidden world to life.

In launching the book, the Minister noted that
“This is the first such Atlas of its kind world-wide, reflecting our leading role in this field...

It will be a valuable resource as we seek to utilise our vast ocean resources in the years ahead. As we develop ocean energy, offshore wind and further oil and gas prospecting, an accurate map of the deep seabed will be vital.”

Minister Lenihan (second from left) with the authors of the atlas: Left to Right: Xavier Monteys (GSI), Andy Wheeler and Boris Dorschel (University College, Cork).Photo:Marine Institute

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Atlas Description

Presented in an accessible, user-friendly format, this atlas sets out all the major features revealed during one of the largest ever deep-sea mapping campaigns. A unique insight into the morphology of the seabed along the continental margin of the North-East Atlantic, it reveals for the first time many features that have hitherto been hidden beneath the waves. It is organised both thematically and by region, with the sea floor and its biological hotspots – areas of high biodiversity such as seamounts – shown at a resolution not possible before. The atlas presents everything from submarine canyons to coral carbonate mounds, using digital terrain models generated from multibeam data and photographs taken from unmanned deep-water vehicles (ROVs).

3D image of the 300 km-long Gollum Channel system off the Porcupine Seabight, extending from the edge of the Seabight right down to the Porcupine Abyssal Plain.Image by B. Dorschel with kind permission from Springer Science+Business Media B.V.	Corals and crinoid starfish cling to the wall of the Whittard Canyon in 800 metres of water. (Photo: National Oceanography Centre, Southampton U.K.)

The full-colour imagery includes digital three-dimensional seabed maps as well as the photographs, with concise text descriptions and topic boxes used to highlight and explain the geological, biological and hydrographical features, in addition to their importance and context in the deep-sea realm. Alongside the wealth of background information and topic boxes on special highlights, extensive on-line resources link the reader to full data sets and GIS locations, while suggestions for further reading point to ongoing research highlights. This is a fascinating resource that will be of use to anyone involved in off-shore and underwater activities, whether scientific or commercial.

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Atlas Media Coverage

There has been lots of coverage surrounding the Atlas in the national media.... Read all about it on INFOMAR's Blog

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Access to Atlas Data

You can you view and download Irish Seabed data from the Irish National Seabed Survey (INSS) and INFOMAR (INtegrated mapping FOr the sustainable development of Ireland's MArine Resource) programmes in a variety of formats.

You can View the INFOMAR data on either of own webmapping viewers

INFOMAR Public Webmapping Viewer...Click Here

Image Webmapping Viewer...Click Here

The data can be downloaded in Google Earth .kmz format.

Download Google Earth...Click Here

 INFOMAR Irish Continental Bathymetry 100m Zone 3(10_08_2010) (285.4 Mb)

Click Here to download additional Google datasets.

The data can be downloaded in Fledermaus .scene format and viewed with the free iView4D.

Fledermaus is a professional visualization and analysis package capable of viewing large amounts of data in a variety of formats, including digital terrain maps, images, points, lines, models, etc.

Viewing the data with iView4D will allow you to explore the data in greater detail than using Goggle Earth.

Download iView4D...Click Here

Download INFOMAR_Bathymetry_100m_Zone3.scene...Click Here

Warning this file is very large and will take a few minutes to load in iView4D (approx. 1GB)

You can download additional Fledermaus .scene files from our Data Download site.

Select your area of interest - Proceed to Download and Select Fledermaus scenes as the Data Type.

You can download all INSS/INFOMAR data from our Data Download Site.

Data such as bathymetry and backscatter grids & geotiffs, ascii files, ArcGIS grids & shapefiles, fledermaus scenes, google .kmzs and leg reports for all INSS and INFOMAR surveys can be downloaded.

Open Download Site

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Purchase Atlas

Atlas of the Deep Water Seabed: Ireland can be purchased from the GSI online shop.

http://www.gsi.ie/gsishop/Product.aspx?Productid=316&Catid=3

It can also can be purchased on the Scientific publisher Springer's website. Click here.

It can also be ordered from amazon.co.uk. Click here.

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