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Polygons of global undersea features for geographic searches

Metadata Updated: September 17, 2025

A shapefile of 311 undersea features from all major oceans and seas has been created as an aid for retrieving georeferenced information resources. Version 1.1 of the data set also includes a linked data representation of 299 of these features and their spatial extents. The geographic extent of the data set is 0 degrees E to 0 degrees W longitude and 75 degrees S to 90 degrees N latitude. Many of the undersea features (UF) in the shapefile were selected from a list assembled by Weatherall and Cramer (2008) in a report from the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) to the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN). Annex II of the Weatherall and Cramer report (p. 20-22) lists 183 undersea features that "may need additional points to define their shape" and includes online links to additional BODC documents providing coordinate pairs sufficient to define detailed linestrings for these features. For the first phase of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) project, Wingfield created polygons for 87 of the undersea features on the BODC list, using the linestrings as guides; the selected features were primarily ridges, rises, trenches, fracture zones, basins, and seamount chains. In the second phase of the USGS project, Wingfield and Hartwell created polygons for an additional 224 undersea features, mostly basins, abyssal plains, and fracture zones. Because USGS is a Federal agency, the attribute tables follow the conventions of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) GEOnet Names Server (http://geonames.nga.mil/gns/html/).

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 17, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 17, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-839a9460-8969-499f-b84f-24744b5c9cfc
Data Last Modified 2024-03-18T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id c8de4a4e-5b44-4fb5-ac88-f0278153f28b
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -180, -74, 180, 89
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 57366ecf4b0f2e9a1131e4fc4e3edf79ce713a23854431714cfeda7ac3c0d356
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -180, -74, -180, 89, 180, 89, 180, -74, -180, -74}

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