Abstract
Abstract Through Ireland's national seabed mapping programme, Integrated Mapping for the Sustainable Development of Ireland's Marine Resource (INFOMAR), the collaboration between Geological Survey Ireland and the Marine Institute continues to comprehensively map Ireland's marine territory in high resolution. Through its work, the programme builds on earlier Irish seabed mapping efforts, including the Irish National Seabed Survey project in producing seabed mapping products that support Ireland's blue economy, European marine policy and international efforts to understand our global oceans. INFOMAR uses a variety of marine technologies to deliver accurate bathymetric maps and useful data products to end users through a free and open source licensing agreement. To reflect the diversity of applications these data products serve, a series of four case studies are presented here focusing on marine geophysical and geological data from locations within Ireland's marine territories. The case studies illustrate how data generated through seabed mapping may be interpreted to directly impact the generation of blue knowledge across a variety of marine environments ranging from shallow coastal and shelf waters to the deep oceanic depths of the continental slope of Ireland's marine area. The impact of Ireland's seabed mapping efforts is further considered in the context of national, European and international initiatives where Ireland's marine knowledge resource is leveraged to deliver positive benefit to the programme's stakeholders.
Highlights
Deep-water hydrographic and geophysical survey operations to designate the boundaries of the Irish continental margin in support of Ireland’s United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) maritime territorial claims began offshore Ireland in 1996 (Naylor et al 1999), conducted by Ireland’s Petroleum Affairs Division on behalf of the Government of Ireland
The primary marine bathymetry dataset derived from full coverage high-resolution multibeam echosounder surveying, is critical for the development of Ireland’s marine knowledge, economy and policy, as well as the protection of its marine environment
The results of this study indicate that the investigated area has highly mobile sediments with distinct migration directions controlled by local hydrodynamic conditions (Fig. 11)
Summary
Ireland’s seabed mapping efforts initially began with the aim of developing a marine baseline dataset to underpin national security as well as future economic, environmental, infrastructural and policy decisions for Ireland as set out in the INFOMAR Proposal and Strategy. East and Hook Head) as a readily identifiable seafloor feature, a bathymetric low, between areas of bedrock Studies have traced this palaeochannel further offshore and indicate that the channel contained much higher water flows than the present day and so may have been formed by discharges of meltwater, flowing with great energy from the ice and out over the exposed shelf (Gallagher 2002). Shaded relief and substrate slope angle products are produced from the multibeam bathymetry data and ground-truth data from sediment grabs augmented the backscatter data
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