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Submarine Mapping Using Multibeam Bathymetry

This document summarizes the use of multibeam bathymetry and acoustic backscatter systems to map submarine topography. Multibeam systems can map wide swaths of seafloor at once, allowing large areas to be mapped rapidly. They provide both bathymetric data on seafloor relief and backscatter data on seafloor composition. The research vessel Hespérides is equipped with multibeam systems that map seafloor morphology and generate high resolution bathymetric charts and acoustic backscatter mosaics to illuminate seafloor features and composition.

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0% found this document useful (1 vote)
370 views5 pages

Submarine Mapping Using Multibeam Bathymetry

This document summarizes the use of multibeam bathymetry and acoustic backscatter systems to map submarine topography. Multibeam systems can map wide swaths of seafloor at once, allowing large areas to be mapped rapidly. They provide both bathymetric data on seafloor relief and backscatter data on seafloor composition. The research vessel Hespérides is equipped with multibeam systems that map seafloor morphology and generate high resolution bathymetric charts and acoustic backscatter mosaics to illuminate seafloor features and composition.

Uploaded by

Sil Alba
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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4.

Conclusions
[3] Jain, A., Hong, L., Pankanti, S., and Bolle, R.
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Algorithm for Thinning Digital Patterns». CACM, 27
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[1] Anil K. Jain, Ruud Bolle and Sharath Pankanti, [6] Simon-Zorita, D., Ortega-Garcia, J., Cruz-
«Biometrics, Personal identification in Networked LLanas, S., and González-Rodríguez, J. «Minutiae
Society». Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999 extraction écheme for fingerprint recognition
systems. In Proceedings of the International
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Submarine Mapping using Multibeam Bathymetry


and and Acoustic Backscatter:
Illuminating the Seafloor
More than 70% of the surface of the Earth is covered Instead of lines of single soundings, new multibeam
by the oceans and its submarine topography is still systems produce a swath of soundings (Fig. 1). In
poorly known, and as a consequence, modern deep-water systems, the swath covered on
oceanographers have constantly tried to improve the seafloor can be up to 7 times the water depth.
their knowledge on the morphology and nature of This means that if we are working in an area of 3000 m
the seafloor. Acoustic mapping systems have water depth, the maximum width swept is of 21 km. To
undergone a revolution during the last thirty years. obtain a complete cartography of the seafloor, the
From single-beam echo-sounders to the more vessel scans adjacent swaths at a speed of 8 to 12
sophisticated multibeam echo-sounders, seafloor knots, drawing up a mosaic of seafloor topography.
mapping techniques and characterization has grown Therefore, in «deep water» (> 3000 m), a zone of 400
impressively. Multibeam echo-sounders are based on km by 20 km (8000 km2) could be surveyed in less
the principle of acoustic wave transmission and than a day.
reception in the water. They represent the most
significant advance in mapping large areas rapidly
and accurately, and are essential for the study of
geomorphology and seafloor facies. Combined with
detailed positioning information (acquired through
modern GPS navigation systems) and advanced
computer graphics, multibeam systems provide us
with a whole new view of the seafloor.

Multibeam echo-sounders: Overview


At first, multibeam echo-sounders consisted of an
extension of single-beam echo-sounders. Arrays of
Fig.1. Sketch of how a multibeam echo-sounder
sonar projectors produce soundings not only along
surveys the seafloor.
the track, but also for significant distance across to
the ship track.

10 Instrumentation Viewpoint, Sarti News Bulletin


Multibeam echo-sounders provide us with two types restricted to a length. The more the pulse lasts the
of complementary information, essential to higher the resolution is (typically between 1ms in
understand the relief and nature of the seafloor: shallow waters and 15 ms in deep waters). The length
between two successive emissions of the sounder is
• Swath-bathymetry represents the submarine referred to as the cadence of the emission and, at
relief usually in metres (m). It is calculated least, it is longer than the duration of the return
based on the time taken by an acoustic wave trajectory of the more external beams.
to propagate in seawater (i.e. sound
propagation speed in water is about 1500 Acquiring new data: The multibeam echo-
m/s). Swath bathymetry mainly gives sounders of the R/V Hespérides
information on the morphology of the
seafloor, which on continental margins is The UTM (Marine Technology Unit) of CSIC
dominated by sedimentary, erosive and (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas)
tectonic processes. in Barcelona is responsible for the maintenance of
the scientific equipment of our oceanographic
• Sonar imagery records the reflectivity of vessels, such as the R/V Hespérides, and provides
the acoustic signal returned by the seafloor the necessary technical support during research
in decibels (dB). Reflectivity varies according cruises, mainly funded by the Spanish Ministry of
to the angle of incidence, seabottom local Education and Science (MEC). The R/V Hespérides
topography and nature of the seafloor is the largest scientific vessel available to the
(Blondel and Murton, 1997). Thus, in a flat national scientific community, and is equipped with
area, different values of acoustic backscatter two different multibeam echo sounders:
must be related to different seabed facies.
For instance, hard acoustic returns are The Simrad EM120 swath-bathymetry system is a full
indicative of hard rock or coarse grainsizes water depth (50-11000 meters) echo-sounder that
(gravel, sands) while softer returns are works at 12 kHz with 191 beams, covering up to 150
indicative of thinner grainsize (silts or clays). degrees. Beam spacing can be equidistant or
equiangular. Transducers are linear arrays in a «mills
Multibeam echo-sounders are composed of the cross» configuration with separate units for
following elements: transmission and reception transmission and reception. All necessary sensor
arrays, transmission electronics, reception unit, user interfaces, data displays for quality control and
interface (with system control options and real-time sensor calibration, seabed visualization and data
processing results) and ancillary systems, such as a logging are a standard part of the system. A
positioning system, attitude sensor unit (giving roll, combination of phase and amplitude detection is used,
pitch, heave and the heading values), and sound resulting in a measurement accuracy in the order of
velocity profiles (SVP). The main characteristics of 50 cm or 0.2% of depth RMS (Root Mean Square),
multibeam echo-sounders are acoustic frequency, whatever is greater, practically independent of beam
maximum angular aperture, number of beams, beam pointing angle. The Simrad EM1002S echo-sounder
spacing, length of emission and cadence of the is the shallow-water system (2–1000 meters) that
emission. The resolution of systems increases with works at 95 kHz with 111 beams covering up to 150
frequency, but so does the attenuation in the water, degrees. Both sounders share the same acquisition
so higher frequency systems will have shallower system, the SIS (Seabed Information System) now
depth limitations than lower frequency systems. operated in a PC under MS Windows, as well as the
Therefore, acoustic frequency determines several attitude sensor, stabilizing the transmitted beams for
types of systems (Lurton, 2002): deepwater systems the ship’s roll, pitch and heave movements.
(50–12000 m) that work at 12 kHz for the deep ocean
and at 30 kHz for continental shelves; shallow-water Processing the data: Obtention of
systems (5–1000 m), work at 100-200 kHz and are
designed for mapping continental shelves, and high-
bathymetric charts and backscatter
resolution systems (few meters) work at 300-500 kHz mosaics
and are used for local studies (e.g. ports, bays, etc).
The frequency also determines the subbottom A multibeam mapping system acquires a large amount
penetration: the lower the frequency the more it of raw data containing the bathymetric and sonar
penetrates into soft sediments. The maximum angu- imagery data. Once processed, bathymetric data is
lar aperture determines the swath width. Typical normally represented as an iso-depth (isobaths) map.
values are from 90º to 150º and beam spacing can be Imagery data is represented as a mosaic. It is also
equidistant or equiangular. The number of beams possible to merge both data on a single combined
changes depending on the echo-sounder. The signals document, overlaying imagery on top of the
commonly used on the acoustic emission are referred bathymetry. In the UTM-CSIC we have implemented
to as «pings», portions of sinusoidal signals a new service addressed to the national scientific

Instrumentation Viewpoint, Sarti News Bulletin 11


community to provide them with the necessary
software, hardware and technical support for
processing data acquired with multibeam echo-
sounders. We are specialized in the CARAIBESTM
system (Fig. 2), a complete submarine mapping
software developed by IFREMER (French Research
Institute for Exploitation of the Sea) to process data
from multibeam echo-sounders (bathymetry and
imagery) and deep-towed sidescan sonars. Next, we
summarize the main steps to follow during processing
of swath-bathymetric and acoustic backscatter data.

Swath-Bathymetry processing
The first step is to import the raw data into CARAIBES
software in order to get navigation (date, time, and
geographic coordinates) and depth data (date, time, Fig. 2. Snapshot windows showing different stages of swath
bathymetric processing with Caraibes. Left: Ping and beam
beam number, two-way travel time). After navigation
editing. Right: Soundings editing across a defined path.
post-processing, which mainly consists of an
automatic filtering of anomalous values, smoothing
and interpolation, the two types of data are merged
and a georeferenced sounding file (x, y, z) is generated.
A Digital Terrain Model (DTM), a binary grid, is first
interpolated from raw soundings to search for errors,
such as the effect of tide (for shallow waters),
variations in water column sound velocity, and
motions of the vessel (roll, pitch and heave) (Bourillet
et al., 1996). Once these corrections are introduced,
data are filtered and cleaned up using different
methods, such as raw data automatic cleaning by
comparison with a reference DTM (using a band-pass
filter), and raw data manually cleaning with the ping
graphical editor to get more accuracy on the depth
data control (Fig. 2). After filtering, bathymetric data
is interpolated at nodes of a regular-spacing grid in
order to get a final DTM. The choice of the spacing of
the grid nodes takes into account the density of the
soundings, quality of the data and finally, the scale
of the final document. The software allows many
operations on the DTMs such as spline or numeric
filter smoothing, interpolation or mosaic of several
DTMs. The final DTM can be displayed under
different cartographic views such as slope gradient
representation, bathymetric cross sections along a
specific path, shaded relief maps and, 2D and 3D
visualizations (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Results of swath bathymetric processing. Left:


Processed data depicted in a colour shaded relief map.
Isobath contour: 100 m. DTM grid: 100 m. Right: 3D map
of the same area, corresponding to the Sao Vicente Canyon
in the SW Iberian Margin. Data acquired during PARSIFAL-

12 Instrumentation Viewpoint, Sarti News Bulletin


Imagery processing
The main goal of the imagery processing is to obtain
a digital image mosaic generated from the seabed
backscattered strength measured in dB (Fig. 4). After
data importation and raw data corrections (time
correction, antenna gain correction, etc.) the mosaic
is prepared including these geometric corrections,
as well as bathymetric and navigation values to
accurately position the imagery pixels (Augustin et
al., 1994). The mosaic can then be created in different
projections (i.e. Mercator, Lambert, UTM, Polar
stereographic) with a given pixel resolution and with
Why do we map the seafloor? Scientific
specification of inter-profile overlapping processing
method (above, below or mixed). Other computations applications of the multibeam echo-sounders
that can be carried out are interpolation (along a fixed
direction or following the ship navigation), filtering, Swath-bathymetry and acoustic backscatter data allow
cartographic extraction, etc. CARAIBES software us to identify the main morphologies and structures
offers also an image analysis module, enabling us to of the seafloor and determine its nature based on the
visualize the image mosaics (typically in grey levels) acoustic facies. The seafloor is an active domain where
and to interactively correct them by enhancing the many processes interact. For instance, in the sediment-
contrast according to the image histogram. The final starved mid-ocean ridges, accretionary processes
mosaic can also be visualized under a large variety of (tectonic, magmatic and hydrothermal) take place with
views in 2D and 3Ds, merged with bathymetric data establishment of extreme ecosystems associated.
(Fig. 4). Detailed mapping of oceanic ridges is essential for
understanding the genesis of new oceanic crust, as
well as information of its axial segmentation and
morphostructure (e.g. Parson et al., 2000). Acoustic
backscatter gives information of the faulting
distribution and magmato-tectonic activity along a
segment, with the identification of different types and
relative age of the submarine lavas. In continental
margins, detailed cartographies have allowed
identification of submarine depositional systems
sources of hydrocarbons, discovery of mud volcanoes,
fluid escape areas and gas hydrates. Mapping and
studying active faults and associated structures (i.e.
large submarine landslides) in continental margins,
such as the Sao Vicente Canyon and Fault that we
present in Figures 3 and 4, has implications in the
assessment of seismic and tsunami hazards in the SW
Iberian Margin (Gràcia et al., 2003). Submarine faults
represent a risk for neighbouring coastal countries
(Spain, Portugal and Morocco) as large destructive
events have already occurred in recent times, such as
the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and tsunami (e.g. Mendes
Victor et al., 1991; Baptista et al., 1998). Following the
same type of approach, a high-resolution multibeam
survey has just been carried out in Sumatra
(Indonesia) to explore the rupture area and possible
Fig. 4. Results of acoustic backscatter processing. submarine landslides resulting from the 26th December
Left: Imagery mosaic. Right: Acoustic imagery 2004 magnitude 9 earthquake, which caused the
overlaid on top of the 3D bathymetry of the Sao consequent tsunami and its devastating effects. In
Vicente Canyon. Dark colours correspond to high summary, high-resolution bathymetry and backscatter
backscatter and light colours to low backscatter. data acquired through new generation of submarine
Regularly spaced thick lines correspond to ship mapping systems provides us with high quality and
track. essential information of geological and geomorphic
processes, and thus a better understanding about
seafloor formation and evolution and, therefore, on
how the Earth system works.

Instrumentation Viewpoint, Sarti News Bulletin 13


Acknowledgements
We thank the captain, crew, technicians and scientific Bourillet, J. F., Edy, C., Rambert, F., Satra, C. and
party of the HITS 2001 cruise on board the BIO Loubrieu, B., 1996. Swath Mapping System
Hespérides, during which the data presented in this Processing: Bathymetry and Cartograph, Marine
article was acquired. We thank funding from the Geophysical Researches, 18, SITUACIÓN
Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (previous MCyT) ACTUAL 487-506.
through projects ESF EuroMargins SWIM (REN2002-
11234-E-MAR) and PN IMPULS (REN2003-
05996MAR).
Gràcia, E., Dañobeitia, J.J, Vergés, J., and PARSIFAL
Team, 2003. Mapping active faults offshore
Portugal (38ºN-36ºN): Implications for seismic
hazard assessment along the southwest Iberian
Margin. Geology, 31, 83-86. Lurton, X., 2002. An
References Introduction to Underwater Acoustics. Principles
and Applications, Praxis Publishing Ltd.,
Augustin J.M., Edy, C., Savoye, B., Le Drezen, E., Chichester, UK.
1994. Sonar mosaic computation from multibeam
echosounder. Oceans’94, Vol2, 433-438.

Mendes Victor, L. et al. 1991. Destructive Earthquakes


and Tsunami Warning System. Terra abstracts, 3,
Baptista, M.A. et al. 1998.Constraints of the Source 1, 119-121.
of the 1755 Lisbon Tsunami Inferred from
Numerical Modelling of Historical Data on the
Source of the 1755 Lisbon Tsunami. J. Geodyn.,
Parson, L.M., Gràcia, E, German, C., Coller, D., Needham,
25, 2, 159-174.Blondel, Ph. and Murton, B.J., D.H., 2000. Second-order segmentation; the
1997. Handbook of Seafloor Sonar Imagery, relationship between volcanism and tectonism at the
PRAXIS-Wiley and Sons: Chichester (UK), 314 MAR, 38°N-35°40’N. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 178, 231-
pp. 251.

SCRIED TCP-IP technologies applied to


distributed data acquisition systems in the
Hesperides vessel
In this paper we present an integration of hardware/ 4. Remote control of all the system
software technologies in systems and networks based application, integration of the acquisition
on TCP-IP protocol. In order to implement distributed network in other user networks (local area
data acquisition systems, a TCP and UDP Humidity networks, Corporative networks and
and Temperature server was designed. This work is internet).
part of the LabVir project, devoted to implementing
distributed measurements in marine technologies 5. Robust and low cost hardware platforms
(processors and sensors).
Ideally a data acquisition system has to offer:
The complete acquisition system is modeled with UML
1. Real time access to data which are (Unified Modeling Language). Originally created to
generated in different nodes of the model and document orientated object applications,
network UML is a powerful tool to analyze any kind of system
in which we can identify its components, expressed as
2. Scalability. New node, application and entities or classes, and the logical relationship between
data type incorporation facilities. Data them. Using UML it is possible to describe all parts of
and application portability. the distributed system no matter their nature (PC,
workstation, intelligent sensor, electronics, …) and the
3. Interoperability. Collaboration between implementation language
nodes. Active data exchange

14 Instrumentation Viewpoint, Sarti News Bulletin

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