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Science 26 September 1997:
Vol. 277. no. 5334, pp. 1956 - 1962
DOI: 10.1126/science.277.5334.1956
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Research Articles

Global Sea Floor Topography from Satellite Altimetry and Ship Depth Soundings

Walter H. F. Smith, * David T. Sandwell

A digital bathymetric map of the oceans with a horizontal resolution of 1 to 12 kilometers was derived by combining available depth soundings with high-resolution marine gravity information from the Geosat and ERS-1 spacecraft. Previous global bathymetric maps lacked features such as the 1600-kilometer-long Foundation Seamounts chain in the South Pacific. This map shows relations among the distributions of depth, sea floor area, and sea floor age that do not fit the predictions of deterministic models of subsidence due to lithosphere cooling but may be explained by a stochastic model in which randomly distributed reheating events warm the lithosphere and raise the ocean floor.

W. H. F. Smith is at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Code E/OC-2, 1315 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910-3282, USA.
D. T. Sandwell is at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: walter{at}amos.grdl.noaa.gov

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