Now, get unprecedented glimpse between earth's crust and mantle

Washington, Mar 10 (ANI): The GOCE Exploitation for Moho Modelling and Applications project - or GEMMA - has generated the first global high-resolution map of the boundary between Earth's crust and mantle based on data from ESA's GOCE satellite.

This boundary between the crust and underlying mantle is known as the Mohorovicic discontinuity, or Moho.

Understanding it will offer new clues into the dynamics of Earth's interior.

GOCE measures the gravity field and models the geoid with unprecedented accuracy to advance our knowledge of ocean circulation, which plays a crucial role in energy exchanges around the globe, sea-level change and Earth interior processes.

GEMMA's Moho map is based on the inversion of homogenous well-distributed gravimetric data.

For the first time, it is possible to estimate the Moho depth worldwide with unprecedented resolution, as well as in areas where ground data are not available. This will offer new clues for understanding the dynamics of Earth's interior, unmasking the gravitational signal produced by unknown and irregular subsurface density distribution.

GEMMA is being carried out by Italian scientist Daniele Sampietro, and is funded by the Politecnico di Milano and ESA's Support To Science Element under the Changing Earth Science Network initiative.

This initiative supports young scientists at post-doctoral level in ESA Member States to advance our knowledge in Earth system science by exploiting the observational capacity of ESA missions. (ANI)