Author: FIELAX GmbH

Review article about sediment temperatures and 2K-criterion available online

A team of scientists from FIELAX has submitted a manuscript about the variability of sediment temperatures and the so-called 2K-criterion to the Elsevier journal 'Applied Thermal Engineering'. The manuscript: /Temperatures in shallow marine sediments: Influence of thermal properties, seasonal forcing, and man-made heat sources/ was accepted today and is available under the following link:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359431116312364

Highlights of this article are:

  • Sediment thermal properties are highly variable.
  • Seasonal forcing causes large spatial and temporal sediment temperature variations.
  • Power cable temperatures strongly depend on thermal properties of a given site.
  • The 2K-criterion is not suitable to detect man-made heat injection.
Multibeam data processing on M126

Data and charting service on Meteor’s M126 BIGMAR cruise

Finding and exploring hydrothermal vents at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge was the objective of a scientific crew sailing on RV "Meteor" in April 2016 which had kindly asked FIELAX to support. A colleague of us attend the cruise, mapped wide areas of the deep sea ridge structures with the ship's multibeam echosounder and processed the data to maps. He also processed and managed acquired photography and navigation data from the MARUM's ROV "Quest" in order to quickly get overview maps and results to support cruise planning and documentation. The contractor was Prof. Dr. Nicole Dubilier from Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. Read more

FIELAX reaches new depths: 5432m to be exact!

FIELAX likes to announce the successful performance of a heat flow measurement in a water depth of more than 5400m. On board the RV Investigator, FIELAX has performed heat flow measurements in the Bight Basin (Offshore South Australia) for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), in cooperation with Chevron. The deepest station measurment was performed in 5432m water depth, a new record for FIELAX and our equipment.

Map viewer for sea floor images

The brand new "OFOS-Viewer" (Ocean Floor Observation System) combines map and seabed image gallery in a user-friendly web tool. Images, geo positions and meta information from several stations and campaigns can be aggregated and visualized. The tool is currently available at www.awi.de: Select a station and go!