GIS-ORIENTED BATHYMETRIC AND BOTTOM TEMPERATURE MAPS OF THE BARENTS AND THE KARA SEAS

R. Shirocov

Earth Cryosphere Institute SB, Russia, Moscow

shirocov@gmail.com

 

Mapping of the offshore and coastal permafrost probably is the main problem in planning studying process of shelf oil-and-gas deposits. To solve part of this problem, we tried to make bathymetric and temperature GIS of costal and offshore permafrost in Barents and Kara Seas. These data were combined within a database (or GIS-system). Oceanographic sources are the main for these maps. Bottom temperature data presented in this GIS-system were collected by ocean research organisations in Russia, the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, and Poland for the Barents, Kara and White Seas region. Recently declassified naval data from Norway, the USA, and the UK are also included. More than 1 000 000 oceanographic stations containing temperature and/or seawater salinity data were originally selected. After correcting errors and eliminating duplicates, data from 206 300 checked stations were placed in the map database. In addition, temperature and salinity measurements were interpolated to the following standard horizons: 0, 25, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 m, and bottom. This atlas covers the 100-year period from 1898 to 1998 and is, to date, the most complete oceanographic data collection for these Arctic shelf seas. This data set is complemented by more than 9 000 measurements of sea surface temperature, which were recently digitized from ship logbooks. They cover the same geographical area within the time period 1867–2004. This data helped in the map compiling of depth and bottom temperature of the Barents sea and  the Kara sea. These maps form only a part of the GIS project.