ML161650
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Tim Boucher. Timecode In: 00:00:14. Timecode out: 00:58:02. Notes: 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; GIS. Equipment Notes: Decoded MS Stereo. Show: Sri Lanka Log of DAT # 10 Engineer: Michael Schweppe Date: January 28, 2005 San = Sanjayan Muthulingam Ravi = Ravi Corea PF = Prithiviraj "Pruthu" Fernando TB = Tim Boucher EA = Elizabeth Arnold MS = Michael Schweppe 0:02 MS (Michael Schweppe): This is tape 10, and it's um, MS for the moment. 0:14 TM (Tim): So I'm gonna attempt to log in. 0:17 EA (Elizabeth Arnold): Is this the one that? 0:19 MS: Yeah, oh ok. 0:24 EA: Does it sound like night to you? 0:25 MS: Yeah 0:26 EA: No, it could be day. If you didn't really know anything. 0:34 MS: If you didn't really know, no. It's just a little more, it's a little more urgent than day. 0:37 TM: Seemed to have success. 0:40 EA: Oh look at that. What is that? 0:41 MS: It's gonna go on either way. 0:43 TM: That's a Baja pigmy owl that I, we had another trip down to the southern tip of Baja and then hiked up, it's found in high elevations in the southern tip of the Baja peninsula. And we hiked up one day and whistled its call and it came in. 1:06 EA: Is it really small? 1:07 TM: It's, yeah, it's almost about that¿ 1:10 EA: Yeah, they're really tiny aren't they. 1:11 TM: And uh, took this photo through my binoculars. 1:16 EA: Can you do that? 1:17 MS: Yeah. 1:18 EA: Oh, through yours maybe. I saw a little pigmy owl in Montana that was like, I mean it was like this¿ 1:21 TM: It's probably very similar. It's probably the cousin of this one, the northern pigmy owl. So, let me just bring up the presentation because I think that's easier. 1:40 EA: Hello? Oh look at this that's a stealth bomber coming in on the oh¿laughing 1:50 TM: So this is our helicopter ride today. And as you can see we've, we've tried to use the helicopter and follow the damage instead of just trying to guess where it is we're trying to use, we had thought of using a range finder but realized that wouldn't work. So we used a helicopter, and asked the helicopter um pilot to actually follow the damage creating contours of damage for us so to speak. And at each damage point I took a GPS reading as well so we could synchronize our photographs that Sanjayan was taking. 2:36 EA: So you can overlay this on a map, or is that¿ 2:40 TM: Well this is, yeah this is, since all of this is geo-referenced, it's been placed on the planet, I can, using the computer software, overlay many different layers of roads, coastline, you could even scan the topo sheets and lay them over. And the other layers we could use for instance as we were talking earlier, we could use pithimatry (?), which is undersea um topography so to speak. So, um, which might have influenced the general direction of the Tsunami. And then what's interesting to me is that the subtle variations of the coastline. And so we could use what's called a digital elevation model and so you'd take the contours of a topographic sheet and you'd digitize them. Or the radar, you'd fly radar which is then backscatter, and you can work out elevation through that and so that's been done with a shuttle radar mission a few years ago. 3:50 EA: So, so you could basically, you could, you could see what corresponded, you could see if you had data about what's going on under the water here, and data up here, you could¿ 4:04 TM: Well you could, first of all, we know where the tsunami started from so we know the direction of the wave. Going from east to west in this case. And so by knowing that if we had sufficiently detailed data of the underfloor, of the undersea floor, we'd be able to model where the wave is going first of all, you know it might, for some geologic fluke, it might have missed Sri Lanka but it didn't. And then as it hits the coastline, you could then model ... (Notes truncated)
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- Cataloged
- 3 Jun 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 3 Jun 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 3 Jun 2010 - Ben Brotman