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WHFC Participates in Reston Open House
The U.S. Geological Survey Eastern Region (ER) Office in Reston, VA, hosted its Science Open House on April 27th and 28th. The event was a huge success, rivaling those of years past with several thousand attendees. The weekend was a gorgeous time to be in Virginia with warm, sunny, cheerful Spring weather! The Reston folks had tents set up outside and exhibits all around the first floor and cafeteria areas. Friday was a day for program managers, ER employees, and executives to tour the exhibits. Saturday was open to the public and everyone turned out for the event. Ben Gutierrez and Ellen Mecray represented the Woods Hole Field Center and the Coastal and Marine Geology Program (CMGP) with a display on the Boston Harbor/Massachusetts Bay study. The display included pictures of the mooring and coring operations aboard the Coast Guard vessel Marcus Hanna and a streaming video of the inhabitants and seafloor features of the region. Equipment exhibited included a sample upward-looking Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) and some associated internal-wave evidence from Massachusetts Bay, and a hands-on GIS display of the study area. The most-talked-about portion of the display was the bottom video and the 3-D seafloor map of Massachusetts Bay. Adults and children loved to see how a flat map appeared drastically different with 3-D glasses, and how Stellwagen Bank really appeared out of the image as a shallower area. While most of the visitors enjoyed the 3-D bathymetry and backscatter images, several comments were priceless highlights to the trip. The first was from a little girl saying how much she loved science: "I LOVE learning science," she said. "I know about half of it already." As it turns out, she was 5 years old! The other highlight was a girl fascinated by the ADCP data on the computer screen. She asked what the data represented. We told her it was evidence of internal waves. She said, "...INTERNAL waves. What are those?" We said, "They're like surface waves in the ocean, only they're underwater between two density layers." She said, "Oh, where the mermaids surf!" What a great way to spend a weekend!!
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in this issue:
Global Assessment of Geologically-Sourced Methane
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U. S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
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