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Advanced mapping of sea bottom topography in a multi sensor approach for morphodynamic studies

Objective



Detailed knowledge of the distribution and dynamical behaviour of shallow water seabed features such as sand waves and sand banks is of vital importance to the construction of effective coastal defences, to the operational guidance of shipping traffic in shallow seas and to the understanding of the benthic processes influencing eco-system development in shelf-sea regions.
The dynamical behaviour of seabed features is presently described by a number of theoretical models. The development of truly effective morphodynamic models is, however, hampered by a poor understanding of the underlying physical processes. In principle, this difficulty could be overcome by gathering long time-series and synoptic data of both bottom topography and hydrometeorological conditions, from which the gradual development of sand waves and sand banks could be observed. In practice, use of the conventional methods of sounding to obtain depth information would become enormously time consuming and expensive if truly synoptic views are required. This proposal aims at developing techniques to provide a frequent and relatively low- cost bottom topography surveillance capability over large areas of the European shelf seas by integrating SAR observations with a limited number of ship-based echo soundings.

The objectives of the project are:

1. Validation and improvement of the forward suite of models describing the mapping of sea bottom topography.

2. Development of techniques to measure the quality of SAR imagery, reduce speckle, to detect and to mitigate interference due to phenomena not related to sea bottom topography, such as slicks, wind-rows, fronts and wakes in SAR imagery.

3. To validate available inverse models for retrieving sea bottom topography information from SAR imagery.

4. Establishment of the possibilities and limitations of mapping sea bottom topography in terms of horizontal resolution and in terms of horizontal and vertical mapping accuracy.

5. Investigation of the applicability of sea bottom topography observations obtained by imaging radars for the monitoring of changes in sea bottom topography in order to study its dynamical behaviour.

6. The investigation of the potential of C-band SAR for sea bottom topography applications.

Call for proposal

Data not available

Coordinator

Stichting Waterloopkundig Laboratorium
EU contribution
No data
Address

8300 AD Emmeloord
Netherlands

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Total cost
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Participants (4)