CSA and BOEM to Publish Online Open-Access Atlas of US Submarine Canyons

This comprehensive open-access depository of maps and seafloor data will prove instrumental to the development of national and regional Environmental Impact Statements (EISs), Environmental Assessments (EAs), ecological investigations, offshore leasing decisions, and President Biden’s “America the Beautiful” initiative.

The project serves as a follow-up to a similar collaboration between CSA and BOEM in 2019, which culminated in the publication of the Large Submarine Canyons of the United States Outer Continental Shelf Atlas (OCS Atlas), issued in November of the same year. The 2019 study initially identified approximately 700 Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) submarine canyons over 10 km long, 130 of which were categorized as “large” canyons (at least 75 km long, 1 km wide, and incised by at least 100 m). The project Team then narrowed the focus to 71 of these large canyons—based on size, location, and availability of information—for detailed mapping and literature review.

“The 2019 OCS Atlas prioritized a certain group of the larger canyons within the OCS, and our task now is to produce additional definitive maps, complete with bathymetric contours, of many of the important medium-to-large submarine canyons that remain, including those beyond the OCS but within the 200-nm reaches of the US EEZ,” explained CSA project lead Steve Viada.