21 



Dr. OsTENSO. This is such a complex issue, there are lots of rea- 

 sons in addition to those which have been mentioned. There is the 

 issue of international accords with other countries, et cetera. 



I think that the real issue here is whether there is a serious 

 effort being made to relook at the classification that was done on 

 the Cold War standards and reassessing it in light of the new 

 world. Yes, a substantial effort is being made. 



This is a horrendous undertaking, just looking at the quantity of 

 data, the ground rules for doing it have to be redrawn. Teams have 

 got to be reorganized, and the process is going on. 



From a civilian, unclassified agency point of view, I am very 

 comfortable with the effort that is going on. I am very comfortable 

 with the attitude the defense and intelligence agencies are bringing 

 to the table. I think that an appropriate readdressing of the prob- 

 lem is being done. I think it is being done in a very positive mind- 

 set. 



Mr. Ortiz. If we don't have any further responses to that ques- 

 tion, I will like to now defer to my good from Texas, Mr. Green. 



Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



This is for any of the panelists. I would like to ask how successful 

 the Navy or NOAA has been in identifying and locating undersea 

 volcanos and earthquakes in using the Navy's Integrated Undersea 

 Surveillance System; and, in light of that, also some of the short- 

 comings of our nautical charts? 



In one of your testimonies, I noticed that you talked about that; 

 and in using your charts, you talk about the Queen Elizabeth off 

 Cape Cod. 



Sometimes we hear complaints in our offices about charts are 

 not as accurate as they should be. I think that is the concern 

 coming from a major seaport. The first one is about the Navy, 

 NOAA, and the volcanos. 



Dr. Hartwig. If I could speak a little bit, and I am sure Dr. Os- 

 tenso could say a few words also. It has been very successful. As 

 Dr. Ostenso said, it takes a lot of effort to extract the signal be- 

 cause it was not set up to detect those. 



In a six-week period of time, when the experiment was going on 

 and data was coming in over to the Naval Research Lab and with 

 outside scientists involved as well as internal Navy scientists in- 

 volved, they were detecting in the North Atlantic Ridge area, hun- 

 dreds of seismic events in a month versus ten seismic events from 

 land-based sensors. It detects and locates where those events are 

 occurring. 



The analysis of what that means is still going on. As I was saying 

 earlier, the data rate is so much higher than we have ever had 

 before for looking at underwater seismic events, it is going to make 

 a change in our understanding of geophysical activities that lead to 

 seismic events and also on understanding the formation of the 

 crust of the ocean at these locations like the mid-Atlantic ridge. 



So it can be done, but it takes a lot of effort right now because it 

 was not designed to do that. But it is being used to do that right 

 now. 



Dr. Ostenso. Another way of expressing that is that on land, we 

 have very few sensors, whereas in the ocean we have many. The 

 capability of a land sensor to detect an ocean bottom volcanism is 



