TY - JOUR
T1 - Depth-dependent geoacoustic inferences with dispersion at the new England mud patch via reflection coefficient inversion
AU - Belcourt, Josee
AU - Holland, Charles W.
AU - Dosso, Stan E.
AU - Dettmer, Jan
AU - Goff, John A.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received September 19, 2018; revised December 19, 2018; accepted February 12, 2019. Date of publication March 19, 2019; date of current version January 13, 2020. This work was supported in part by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and in part by the Canadian Department of National Defence. (Corresponding author: Stan E. Dosso.) Guest Editor: P. Wilson. J. Belcourt and S. E. Dosso are with the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC V8W 2Y2, Canada (e-mail:,joseebelcourt@ uvic.ca; [email protected]). C. W. Holland is with the Applied Physics Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16804 USA (e-mail:,[email protected]). J. Dettmer is with the Department of Geoscience, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada (e-mail:,[email protected]). J. A. Goff is with the Institute for Geophysics, Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 USA (e-mail:, [email protected]). This paper has supplementary downloadable material available at http:// ieeexplore.ieee.org, provided by the authors. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JOE.2019.2900115
Publisher Copyright:
© 1976-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2020/1
Y1 - 2020/1
N2 - Depth-dependent geoacoustic properties are inferred from wide-angle frequency-domain reflection-coefficient data at two sites with different mud-layer thicknesses on the New England Mud Patch. A trans-dimensional Bayesian inversion is employed to estimate geoacoustic properties and uncertainties from these data using the viscous grain shearing sediment model and spherical-wave reflection-coefficient predictions. Results near the thick-mud (SWAMI) site show a nearly uniform sound velocity over the upper approximately 9.2 m, followed by a transition layer with velocity increasing nonlinearly by ~280 m/s over 1.8 m. At the thin-sediment (VC31-2) site, the velocity profile exhibits a similar transition layer. Estimates of intrinsic velocity and attenuation dispersion are also obtained. Over the measurement band of about 400-1300 Hz, the velocity in the fine-grained sediments (mud) at both sites varies by only a few meters per second, i.e., velocity is nearly independent of frequency. The attenuation of the fine-grained sediments at both sites follows a nearly linear frequency dependence. The geoacoustic inferences compare reasonably closely with independent measurements including core measurements, chirp-reflection data, and angle of intromission data.
AB - Depth-dependent geoacoustic properties are inferred from wide-angle frequency-domain reflection-coefficient data at two sites with different mud-layer thicknesses on the New England Mud Patch. A trans-dimensional Bayesian inversion is employed to estimate geoacoustic properties and uncertainties from these data using the viscous grain shearing sediment model and spherical-wave reflection-coefficient predictions. Results near the thick-mud (SWAMI) site show a nearly uniform sound velocity over the upper approximately 9.2 m, followed by a transition layer with velocity increasing nonlinearly by ~280 m/s over 1.8 m. At the thin-sediment (VC31-2) site, the velocity profile exhibits a similar transition layer. Estimates of intrinsic velocity and attenuation dispersion are also obtained. Over the measurement band of about 400-1300 Hz, the velocity in the fine-grained sediments (mud) at both sites varies by only a few meters per second, i.e., velocity is nearly independent of frequency. The attenuation of the fine-grained sediments at both sites follows a nearly linear frequency dependence. The geoacoustic inferences compare reasonably closely with independent measurements including core measurements, chirp-reflection data, and angle of intromission data.
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U2 - 10.1109/JOE.2019.2900115
DO - 10.1109/JOE.2019.2900115
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85063369827
SN - 0364-9059
VL - 45
SP - 69
EP - 91
JO - IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering
JF - IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering
IS - 1
M1 - 8669877
ER -