Performance and Progress Report - John Doe FIX: put in the authors ...

� Nyofs (New York Harbor)
� Gulf of Mexico
The visualization package can display salinity or temperature profiles and supports an
exciting array of particle tracing methods. It also allows for 2D or 3D viewing.
There are two other sub-projects within our flow visualization initiative:
Museum exhibits: Following on our successful development of a kiosk-based interactive
3-D museum exhibit for Seacoast Science Center (GeoExplorer) which allows an
interactive tour through an immersive 3-D environment up and under the Piscataqua
River, stopping at interesting sights along the way, Ware gas developed a prototype
touch-screen display that that incorporates flow model for the Pisquataqua River, Great
Bay and Little Bay Estuary has been built. The display shows the flow of water in the
Estuary as a function of tides and currents. Wherever the screen is touched a bright dye
is injected into the system and the observer can see the fate of the injected particles over
several current and tidal cycles. Additionally, Ware continues to work with Kate Raisz of
Northern Lights on the Smithsonian Science-on-a-sphere visualization of global flow
patterns (for the new Smithsonian Oceans Hall).
NOAA Nowcoast: Colin Ware and NOAA employee John Kelley have initiated a new
project to create innovative and more effective ways of presenting NOAA flow model
output (from the HYCOM system of models) to the general public. Pete Mitchell’s
master’s thesis is the major research component. Briana Sullivan will be helping with
evaluation and technology transfer. An evaluation study is currently underway.
Mid-water fish: One of the most exciting advances of this year has been our adaptation
of a new generation of multibeam sonars to allow the real-time visualization of targets in
the water column. While aspects of this fall under our visualization theme, we will
discuss this activity in detail under “New Projects”.
SEAFLOOR CHARACTERIZATION:
We have a number of inter-connected research programs underway aimed at exploring
the ability of our mapping systems to provide quantitative information on the make-up
and character of the seafloor as well as its depth. These programs deal with a range of
sensors (single beam, multibeam and sidescan sonars, lidar, video, etc.) and involve
theoretical studies, the collection of remotely sensed data, and “ground-truth” samples.
They are particularly relevant for the increasingly important topic of essential fisheries
habitat characterization.
SINGLE BEAM SONAR AND MAPPING AND CHARACTERIZATION:
In general support of our seafloor characterization efforts, Semme Dijkstra has continued
the development of several software tools. The TracEd tool provides a robust means of
tracking, editing and parsing returns from single beam echosounders. This tool, which
JHC Performance Report 38 30 January 2007