Antarctic Multibeam Bathymetry and Geophysical Data Synthesis: an on-line digital data Resource for marine geoscience research in the Southern Ocean

The Antarctic Multibeam Bathymetry and Geophysical Data Synthesis(AMBS) is a web-accessible data
resource for marine geoscience research in the Southern Ocean. The primary focusisto preserve and provide public
accessto multibeam bathymetry acquired during expeditions of research vesselssupported by the U.S. National Science
Foundation. Since itsinception in 2003, our primary goal has been to facilitate visualization and exploration of the subsea landscape to the full detail of the original data by both specialists and non-specialists. Visualization across a widerange of map scales at high latitudesis made possible by dynamic accessto a gridded synthesisin both Polar and
Mercator projections. A second goal isto support multi-disciplinary research needs by offering data discovery and
visualization of numerous complementary geoscience datasets.In thisreport, we describe the design objectives and
architecture of the AMBS, as well asrecent developmentsregarding data submission and delivery via Web Services