The application of broad-band acoustic tomography to the monitoring of the shallow water environment: Validation and trends

In recent years SACLANTCEN has developed and validated acoustic and geoacoustic inversion techniques for shallow and very shallow water environments. Phase and amplitude information from waterborne broad-band acoustic pressure fields and waveforms are exploited and global optimization techniques are applied to estimate determinant environmental properties. This paper discusses four experimental environmental monitoring applications: 1) Detailed geophysical properties of the seafloor upper strata northwest of Formiche di Grosseto islands, off the west coast of Italy, 2) Oceanographic dynamics in the Giglio basin, 3) Oxygen synthesis by Posidonia oceanica at Scoglio Africa, and 3) Water exchanges and concomitant transport of sediment in the Venice lagoon.