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USGS Woods Hole Staff Go to Washington, D.C., for Oceans 2005
Team members from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)'s Woods Hole Science Center organized a booth and presented the capabilities of the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program (CMGP) at the Oceans 2005 Conference in Washington, D.C., September 19-23, 2005. Nicknamed the USGS "campsite," the booth showcased posters and fact sheets from science projects across the program, as well as PowerPoint presentations and three-dimensional sea-floor images presented by using the portable GeoWall system. The posters had been collected by outreach officers from across CMGP, including Chris Polloni, Ellen Mecray, Ann Tihansky, and Helen Gibbons. We had more posters than we could display all at once, and so we grouped them by theme and showed a different group of posters on each day of the 3-day exposition. Posters displayed on the first day highlighted CMGP's technology and information themes, those on the second day showcased our work on hazards, and those on the third day focused on our regional approach to science, using the Gulf of Maine as an example. Highlighted technologies included autonomous underwater vehicles, laboratory capabilities across the program, gas-hydrate testing, digital shoreline analysis, an underwater microscope system ("the eyeball"), and sea-floor mapping. Highlighted hazard projects included Louisiana coastal studies, tsunami mapping, investigations of hurricanes in southwestern Florida, and the USGS response to Hurricane Katrina. The final poster exhibit highlighted regional projects that are conducted by using sea-floor mapping, textural analysis, contaminant inventories, geologic mapping, and sediment-transport modeling. Thank you to all of the project chiefs who contributed to this effort! Visitors were drawn to the USGS booth's interactive displays of three-dimensional sea-floor imagery around Puerto Rico, outer Cape Cod, Mass., and Tampa Bay, Fla. The GeoWall flight simulator and Fledermaus software allowed visitors to "fly" through integrated lidar (light detection and ranging), DEM (digital-elevation model), orthophoto, and multibeam-bathymetric data. Visitors to the booth included home-schooled students, college students, professors, and representatives of nonprofit organizations, ocean industries, and all branches of ocean-related military offices. There was a homework assignment circulating in the exhibit hall that asked for the "favorite booth," and the USGS booth was cited! Visitors to the booth left with a renewed excitement about the oceans and a better understanding of the USGS' role in conducting unbiased scientific research for the public. The Oceans Conference is an annual technical and professional conference sponsored by the Marine Technology Society and the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society. It typically includes participants from government, industry, and academia, as well as many others who have interests across the entire spectrum of ocean science, technology, engineering, policy, education, and related disciplines. This year's conference was organized around the central theme of "One Ocean" to emphasize people from all sectors of ocean science working together in ocean technology, education, and policy. The conference included several sessions devoted to understanding the President's Ocean Action Plan (available online at URL http://ocean.ceq.gov/), the need for ocean education at all levels, and emerging technologies to explore the ocean realm. At the booth, we fielded questions about the scientific activities conducted by the USGS, as well as questions about why we map the sea floor, how we use the latest technologies, and how the USGS will be involved in the integrated government response to Hurricane Katrina. We also pointed visitors to our collection of fact sheets highlighting work conducted across the country in marine and coastal areas. The preparation and execution of the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program booth would not have been possible without the help and dedication of Tom O'Brien, Bill Danforth, Brian Buczkowski, Chris Polloni, Ellen Mecray, Dave Nichols, Dave Foster, Ann Tihansky, Betsy Boynton, Kate Ciembronowicz, Hank Chezar, Nancy Soderberg, Florence Wong, and each of the project scientists who contributed posters and fact sheets for the event.
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in this issue:
Sea Squirt Colonies Persist on Georges Bank
USGS Woods Hole Staff Go to Washington, D.C., for Oceans 2005 USGS Scientists Featured in News Segment on Broken Levees
Keith Miles Wins Unsung Hero Award Marlene Noble Wins Reimbursable Activities Recognition Award Tsunami Researchers Win the Western Region Communicator of the Year Award USGS Volunteer Wins AAPG Pacific Section Award for Best Paper |
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U. S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
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