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View of Crater gets even clearer Image from U.S. Geological Survey The false colors in this picture of Crater Lake have a scientific purpose: The bands represent varying depths of water and allow viewers to look into the lake to see the floor and other landforms as if the water had been drained out. Wizard Island is on the left. Scientists get better look at lake bottom By Paul Fattig For more than 20 years, Charlie Bacon conducted his research of Crater Lake with blurred vision. But it has all became crystal clear for the volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey office in Menlo Park, Calif., thanks to recent mapping of the caldera with the latest deep-sea technology. "It�s like having awful vision and suddenly you�ve got a superb pair of glasses," he said of his research that began in 1979. Until the mapping by a team from the USGS, the National Park Service and the University of New Hampshire late last month, scientists studying the deepest lake in the nation relied on maps made by less sophisticated sonar in 1959, ore samples taken from the lake bottom and research by submersibles in 1988-89. "This is showing immensely more detail � it�s revolutionary," Bacon said. "We haven�t found any shockers yet, but there has already been a lot of confirmation of things we�ve interpreted earlier. "This is going to greatly improve the understanding of the lake�s history," he added. The brightly colored, computer-generated images look almost psychedelic. But the colors have a scientific purpose: The bands represent varying depths and allow viewers to look into the lake to see the floor and other landforms as if the water had been drained out. The USGS is continuing to post images of the previously unknown world at the lake bottom, nearly 2,000 feet below the surface at some points, on the Internet. The images can be viewed at http://tahoe.usgs.gov/craterlake/. "We�re posting them as quickly as we can generate them," said Jim Gardner, a marine geologist who is chief of Pacific sea-floor mapping for USGS in Menlo Park. "We�ll be processing all the data we�ve collected," he added. "We�re also creating much higher-resolution maps as we go along." One image shows Wizard Island, both below and above the water line. The view is from the north. "The dark purple and blue is the deep basin on either side of the central plateau of Wizard Island," Gardner explained. "If you look below Wizard Island at the green-blue transition area, you�ll see a series of lava flows. The lake was already filled with water when that happened." At the far left of that image, an underwater landslide is visible, he noted. The USGS plans to produce a CD-ROM of the lake bottom. The CD will be available free of charge. The National Park Service also will use the images to create a computerized "virtual fly-through" of the lake bottom at its visitor center. With the public looking over their shoulders via the cyberspace images, scientists will continue to pore over the sonar images of the caldera that is the remnant of a 12,000-foot volcano that erupted 7,700 years ago, Gardner said. "We�re not going to sort it all out in the next week," he said. "It will take quite a while to do that." The nearly $200,000 mapping project was the first to map the scenic lake since 1959. The mapping technique used more than 40 years ago was crude compared to the modern sonar systems with its multi-beam capacity, scientists said. The boat used for the research was owned by C&C Technologies Inc. of Lafayette, La. The firm specializes in underwater mapping. More than half of the $200,000 price tag was paid out of a settlement involving the 1995 crash of a helicopter owned by American Eurocopter of Grand Prairie, Texas. After a helicopter crashed into the lake, the firm paid the park service $122,500. Federal law requires owners of crashed aircraft to remove wreckage from crash sites in national parks. Remains of the craft, which disintegrated on impact, have not been found. The pilot and a passenger died in the crash. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA