• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.273-284
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• 2002

The Gravity-Geologic Method (GGM) was implemented for bathymetric determinations in the Drake Passage, Antarctica, using global marine Free-air Gravity Anomalies (FAGA) data sets by Sandwell and Smith (1997) and local echo sounding measurements. Of the 6548 bathymetric sounding measurements, two thirds of these points were used as control depths, while the remaining values were used as checkpoints. A density contrast of 9.0 gm/㎤ was selected based on the checkpoints predictions with changes in the density contrast assumed between the seawater and ocean bottom topographic mass. Control depths from the echo soundings were used to determine regional gravity components that were removed from FAGA to estimate the gravity effects of the bathymetry. These gravity effects were converted to bathymetry by inversion. In particular, a selective merging technique was developed to effectively combine the echo sounding depths with the GGM bathymetiy to enhance high frequency components along the shipborne sounding tracklines. For the rugged bathymetry of the research area, the GGM bathymetry shows correlation coefficients (CC) of 0.91, 0.92, and 0.85 with local shipborne sounding by KORDI, GEODAS, and a global ETOPO5 model, respectively. The enhanced GGM by selective merging shows imploved CCs of 0.948 and 0.954 with GEODAS and Smith & Sandwell (1997)'s predictions with RMS differences of 449.8 and 441.3 meters. The global marine FAGA data sets and other bathymetric models ensure that the GGM can be used in conjunction with shipborne bathymetry from echo sounding to extend the coverage into the unmapped regions, which should generate better results than simply gridding the sparse data or relying upon lower resolution global data sets such as ETOPO5.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.181-192
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• 2015

Bathymetry change due to the 2011 Tohoku (M9.0) earthquake was investigated through satellite altimetry-derived free-air gravity anomalies (SAFAGA) and shipborne measurements. The earthquake occurred at the plate boundaries near the northeastern coast of Japan, where the oceanic plate subducts beneath the continental plate along deep-sea trench. Data analyzed in this study include SAFAGA from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), shipborne bathymetry (SB) from the U.S. National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth-Science And Technology (JAMSTEC). To estimate the bathymetry change, a reference bathymetry before the earthquake was predicted by gravity-geologic method (GGM) and Smith & Sandwell’s (SAS) method. In comparison with the bathymetry models before the earthquake, GGM bathymetry model generated by a tuning density contrast of 17.04 g/cm³ by downward continuation method was selected because it shows better bathymetry in the short wavelength below about 6 km. From the results, remarkable bathymetry change of about ±50 m was found on the west side of the Japan Trench caused by the earthquake.