PROCESSING AND VISUALIZATION OF OCEANOGRAPHIC DATA IN 2.5 AND 3D- EXAMPLES FROM THE BERING SEA, ARCTIC AND WEST COAST OF THE UNITED STATES

Tiffany C. Vance¹ and Nazila Merati²

¹ NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Resource Assessment Conservation Engineering, 7600 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115, U.S.A. Tiffany.C.Vance@noaa.gov

² NOAA, Office of Atmospheric Research, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Ocean Climate Research Division, 7600 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115, U.S.A. Nazila.Merati@noaa.gov

NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) and Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC), both in Seattle, collect a wealth of data about the physical and biological characteristics of the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. The data are stored in a variety of formats in a variety of data systems. AFSC makes extensive use of a GIS to store their data. PMEL has growing expertise in visualizing scientific data. Routines have been developed to take data from a variety of sources that have not previously been GIS compatible. ArcView GIS and ArcView 3D Analyst have been used to create a series of VRML visualizations of these data. Some of the VRML files have been created directly from 3D Analyst; others have required extensive postprocessing. The use of EVS, a geological software visualization package, to create true 3D visualizations will also be demonstrated.