268 OCEANOGRAPHY 1961 — PHASE 3 



Mr. Vanik. Miss Pruitt, you are head of the Geography Branch. 

 I wonder if you would not give us a brief description of your work 

 in your office. 



Miss Pruitt. The work of the entire office, Mr. Chairman, goes into 

 five separate fields, and at least two of these are important here. 



These have already been mentioned by Admiral Coates, that is, 

 coastal geography and Arctic geography. Both of these programs 

 are administered by the Geography Branch. 



In coastal geography, our principal focus is on that section of 

 the world, throughout the world, where the land and the sea in- 

 fluence each other. We are concerned with the three interfaces of land, 

 sea, and air. The land adds a complication to, say, midocean oceanog- 

 raphy. Yet the oceanographic aspects and the terrestrial aspects are 

 both of concern to us in our efforts in coastal geography to understand 

 the processes that control the behavior of the coastal zone. 



We pay particular attention in our program to beaches and their 

 structures. 



We include studies of a wide variety of sites, since the structure of 

 the coast is important, the climate of the coast is important, and the 

 oceanic or wave-current situations are important, and these conditions 

 working together make quite a variety of circumstances. We have 

 spread our research program around the world in order to get suffi- 

 ciently varied sites to, we hope, learn something that is true for all 

 situations. 



In this, we are practically interested, as I said, in beach structure. 

 We have reached the point where industry can be very important in 

 this, since we are at the stage where we must begin to measure some of 

 the important properties of breaking waves through the surf zone. 



Here I believe we have the industrial competence to do this. Cer- 

 tainly, surveys and contacts with industries indicate we have, even 

 to the point of measuring such things as turbulence, a property that is 

 extremely important in the coastal process. 



Mr, Vanik. Is your work coordinated with that of the Beach 

 Erosion Board? 



Miss Pruitt. Very closely. 



In the other program, our Arctic geography program, a good deal 

 of what goes on is of concern to and is part of an oceanographic 

 program. 



Our interests are broad throughout the Arctic Basin. This is a 

 particularly interesting ocean, because in a sense it has an ice lid. 

 This means that we have abundant platforms from which to work. 



The United States has a real asset in the Arctic Research Labora- 

 tory, which is located at Point Barrow. This is the only laboratory 

 that this Nation has with easy access to all parts of the Arctic Ocean. 

 It is a natural focal point for research in the Arctic. 



A program has gone on for several years there, concerned with 

 Arctic oceanography, with the added feature of sea ice. 



Not only do we have the classic oceanographic approach, including 

 acoustical problems, bottom problems, and marine biology problems, 

 but we are also concerned with ice physics, behavior of ice, and the 

 understanding of the ice interface, water interface, and air inter- 

 face problems. 



