State Funding - 2006 Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2006 (Proposition 84).įederal Funding - NOAA National Ocean Service, Office of Coast Surveys U.S.
Objective - create a comprehensive coastal/marine bathymetric, geologic, and habitat base map series for all state waters (MHHW - 3nm). The seafloor is colored for depth with reds and oranges representing shallower regions and dark blues and purples representing deeper regions.
The movie finishes by flying over very complex seafloor of folded bedrock, fault scarps, and ripple scour depressions south of Half Moon Bay and offshore San Gregorio State Beach. The movie then turns south flying down the coast past Pacifica and towards Half Moon Bay again revealing folded and fractured bedrock beneath the Maverick's surf break. The movie flies out of San Francisco Bay pausing over a field of large sand waves west of the Golden Gate, and then up to the Bolinas area revealing folded and fractured bedrock.
Virtual fly-through over the seafloor of Central California near San Francisco as if the water was drained from the ocean. Facilitating outreach to heighten public education and awareness of coastal ecosystems, resources, and issuesĭata collected during this project reveal the seafloor offshore of the California coast in unprecedented detail (for example, see the movie below) and provide an ecosystem context for the effective management of this precious marine resource.Providing a framework for scientific research.Enabling more effective regulation of offshore development.Providing a database of sediment distribution and thickness, important input for regional sediment management.Identifying offshore active faults and submarine landslides, providing the basis for earthquake and tsunami hazard assessments and hazard mitigation.Enabling modeling of coastal flooding from sea-level rise and large storms.Establishing baselines for long-term monitoring of coastal evolution related to climate change, large storms, and anthropogenic influences.Definition of habitats for ecosystem-based management.The California Ocean Protection Council (COPC) authorized funds to establish the CSMP in 2007 and assembled a team of experts from state and federal agencies, academia, and private industry to develop the best approach to mapping and classifying coastal and marine geologic habitats, while at the same time updating all nautical charts. Initiated in 2008, the CSMP has collected bathymetry (underwater topography) and backscatter data (providing insight into the geologic makeup of the seafloor) that are being turned into habitat and geologic base maps for all of California's State Waters (mean high water line out to three nautical miles).Īlthough the CSMP was originally developed to support the design and monitoring of marine reserves through the Marine Life Protection Act, accurate statewide mapping of the seafloor has also contributed significantly to these efforts: