Shallow Survey 2008

You may have noticed a lack of blog posts the past week or so. This is because I have been volunteering at the Shallow Survey 2008 conference hosted by CCOM and held at the Wentworth by the Sea hotel in Portsmouth, NH. Shallow Survey is a conference dedicated to the techniques and issues related to mapping in shallow water environments. A common dataset, made up of a specific patch of seafloor that is repeatedly surveyed using many different methods (multibeam, lidar, interferometric, etc.), is provided for analysis by anyone wishing to do so. Although papers do not have to specifically use that dataset, many do, in order to show comparisons between different systems or methods.

In exchange for volunteering, I got to attend all the events and talks, which was really nice. I met a lot of interesting people doing really cool research, made some very valuable contacts, and even got to catch up with some of my old NAVO coworkers.

The program can be found here: Shallow Survey 2008 program

There were many excellent talks, but one of the most exciting as far as my research is concerned was the one by Valérie Robitaille, entitled "Identification of Sedimentary Facies and Biological Habitats through Reflectance Measurements Using a Multi-Beam Autonomous Portable Laser Equipment (MAPLE) to Standardize Airborne Laser Bathy Systems." Her abstract can be downloaded from the program link above. This research was done for her Master's, and she is about to move into her Ph.D. Hopefully I will get to see more of Valérie at future conferences.

At the very end of the conference they announced that Shallow Survey 2011 will be held in Wellington, New Zealand. I am definitely going to try to go that!