The ocean being at least 70% of the earth does not just provide resources to sustain human life but also drives earth’s processes geologically and climate-wise. With climate change, sea-level rise, tsunami threats and marine pollution; seamless land and underwater elevation is essential for risk mitigation which are based on scientific models and analyses. Even though most marine science studies use seafloor topographic data as base information needed for creating ocean process models, analysis and interpretation, ~80% of the world’s ocean is still unmapped. Hence, increasing the uncertainty of the accuracy of local and global models. This is what drives The Nippon Foundation – GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project to pursue gathering and compiling existing data and promote ocean mapping so that humanity will have free data access of a fully-mapped ocean floor by year 2030.
We present of how Seabed 2030 has been able to convert needs into to action in the Pacific.