This month we're detailing some of the best ways to learn about the various facets of GOM3. First, the next hands-on workshop will be held by TeachMeGIS at their training center in west Houston on Thursday, March 9th. This class, Analyzing Petroleum Data in the Gulf of Mexico with GOM3, covers the basics of GOM3 data, ArcGIS and GOMsmart. An outline of the class is available here (PDF) and registration can be completed at the TeachMeGIS website, www.teachmegis.com. The next offering is not until July 19th, so check your schedules today.
Next up, as mentioned last month, Charles Fried is now working with us in Houston. Charles is available to give overviews of both GOM3 and GOMsmart in your offices, as well as advice on workflows specific to your company to maximize the efficiency of GOM3. Furthermore, with Charles based in Houston, scheduling is far quicker than organizing visits from California. He will be checking in with all of our clients soon, but feel free to contact him to schedule a visit: charles@earthsci.com.
Finally, we plan to start up some webinars again in the spring, beginning with a quick look at the changes to GOM3 after the last Central Lease sale. As you know, the August sale will cover both the Central and Western portions of the Gulf and some tweaks are planned to account for that change. More information will be available next month.
Bathymetry Advances
As many people pointed out to us (and for which we are grateful), BOEM released a high-resolution bathymetry grid covering the slope and deepwater portions of the Gulf, between the shelf and the abyssal plain. This grid, composed of 1.4 billion 40x40 foot cells, is a large improvement over the previous bathymetry which came from NOAA's NGDC Coastal Relief Model and was composed of cells covering three arc seconds (along the globe). In the image below, the old resolution on the left is compared to the new one on the right.
A new resolution was used to match the cell size of the old raster dataset to the new one, then combined with the new data. This seamless dataset covers the entire Gulf of Mexico with the best resolution where available and the older resolution in the remaining areas. The data, saved in a file geodatabase, is being made available to download in a special update because of its large size.
If you have suggestions please let us know at contactesa@earthsci.com.