Using Multibeam Echosounders for Multiscale and Interdisciplinary Habitat Mapping on the Dutch Continental Shelf

Because the seafloor is a complex ecosystem, a multidisciplinary approach must be adopted in order to produce comprehensive habitat maps. Such multidisciplinary projects have been lacking for the Dutch area of the North Sea. To address this lack, the Distribution, structure and functioning of low resilience seafloor communities and habitats of...

Acoustic mapping and monitoring of the seabed: From single-frequency to multispectral multibeam backscatter

With the increasing human activities in the marine environment, such as fisheries, dredging, coastal protection or construction of marine infrastructure, seabed sediment and habitat mapping have become highly relevant for the development of sustainable marine management strategies. Compared to traditional mapping methods, primarily based on bed...

Monitoring underwater nourishments using multibeam bathymetric and backscatter time series

Natural and man-induced coastal erosion endanger life and environment in coastal areas worldwide. For sedimentary barrier coasts, beach and underwater nourishments are an efficient coastal protection strategy. To optimize nourishments and to understand their impact on the marine environment, monitoring strategies are required. In this study,...

Mapping the seabed and shallow subsurface with multi-frequency multibeam echosounders

Multi-frequency multibeam backscatter (BS) has indicated, in particular for fine sediments, the potential for increasing the discrimination between different seabed environments. Fine sediments are expected to have a varying signal penetration within the frequency range of modern multibeam echosounders (MBESs). Therefore, it is unknown to...

Seafloor characterization using multibeam echosounder backscatter data: Methodology and results in the north sea

Seafloor characterization using multibeam echosounder (MBES) backscatter data is an active field of research. The observed backscatter curve (OBC) is used in an inversion algorithm with available physics-based models to determine the seafloor geoacoustic parameters. A complication is that the OBC cannot directly be coupled to the modeled...