Indications of marine benthos occurrence from multi-spectral multi-beam backscatter data: a case study in the North Sea

To facilitate the conservation of seafloor habitats and planning of offshore activities, there is a growing need for mapping marine benthos in an effective and efficient way. Acoustic data acquired by multi-beam echosounders (MBES) have been extensively used for large-scale and high-resolution seafloor characterization. A deeper understanding of...

Inverting for bottom parameters in shallow-water soft sediment environments using MBES backscatter strength

Shallow water naval operations require detailed knowledge of the environmental properties. In addition to parameters such as water depth, knowledge about the sediment properties is of high importance for a wide range of operations. In this context, the MREA BP'07 experiment was carried out in the Mediterranean Sea in 2007. Measurements employed...

The potential of inverting geo-technical and geo-acoustic sediment parameters from single-beam echo sounder returns

Seafloor characterization is important in many fields including hydrography, marine geology, coastal engineering and habitat mapping. The advantage of non-invasive acoustic methods for sediment characterization over conventional bottom grabbing is the nearly continuous versus sparse sensing and the enormous reduction in survey time and costs....