Methods and procedures to determine the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles

This paper establishes techniques and methods to determine a variety of boundaries associated with 200 nautical miles beyond the continental shelf. The methods, based on topography, slope and second-derivative profile integrated analysis, are now able to identify automatically the foot of the continental slope (FOS). By analyzing the sedimentary profile, the points of 1% sediment thickness are recognized. Through the intersection, cut, deletion and mergence calculation of the extrapolated data set of fixed-point series, the method succeeds in generating automatically the extrapolated boundaries, including the FOS+60 M line, the 350 M line, and the 2 500 m+100 M line. In addition, based on the automatic analysis of the topographic profile, it can be applied to determine rapidly the points of maximum water depth. Taking the northern Okinawa Trough (OT) as an example, these methods are used to calculate and examine the boundaries included in the Submission by the People's Republic of China Concerning the Outer Limits of the Continental Shelf beyond 200 Nautical miles in Part of the East China Sea (ECS); the boundaries thus derived have a solid scientific and rational basis.