Abstract
ABSTRACT The study presents a 1:3300 scale map, encompassing an area of 1.05 km2, depicting the first detailed map of the shallow-water water hydrothermal system in Paleochori Bay, Milos, Greece. The seafloor was mapped using orthophotos acquired by a drone survey and processed using ArcGIS. The map shows the distribution of white microbial mats, former microbial mats, sea grass and ‘normal’ sand down to a depth of 15 m. Generation of a comprehensive map with native shapefiles and layer files, where any GPS coordinate in Paleochori Bay can be obtained, allows to target specific locations for data collection, rather than resorting to vague site descriptions, as has been the practice in the past. Sea floor temperature measurements carried out by Scuba divers in conjunction with GPS coordinates were mapped and interpolated to evaluate the temperature distribution in Paleochori Bay, which in turn supports the overall understanding of the hydrothermal system.
Highlights
Most research on marine hydrothermal venting focused primarily on deep-sea black smokertype locations, hydrothermal venting is not confined to the deeper parts of the ocean
The detailed mapping of the shallow water hydrothermal system in Paleochori Bay was based on aerial imagery collected in October 2016 by an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) consisting of an unmanned aerial vehicle, a ground-based controller, a system of communications between the two and off-theshelf software to calculate and execute flight patterns
A detailed knowledge of the shallow-water hydrothermal system in Paleochori Bay is necessary to ascertain the impacts of such heavy metals from regional to global scales
Summary
Most research on marine hydrothermal venting focused primarily on deep-sea black smokertype locations, hydrothermal venting is not confined to the deeper parts of the ocean. Aerial photography and mapping either by plane or drone has been successfully applied in shallow, near shore marine environments during studies of submarine groundwater discharge and for monitoring of coral reef development (Casella et al, 2016, 2017; Johnson et al, 2008), but to date has not been applied to MSWHS. With this in mind, we created a map of Paleochori Bay from high-resolution, geo-referenced aerial photos, which were collected by drone. This work has significance beyond Paleochori Bay since this approach will be transferable to other sites of MSWHS worldwide
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