Ocean wave diffraction in near-shore regions observed by Synthetic Aperture Radar

Observation and analysis of ocean wave diffraction in near-shore and near-island region was performed with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, using an optimized retrieval method named parameterized first-guess spectrum retrieval method. The results retrieved from ERS-SAR and ENVISAT-ASAR images showed that, in the region sheltered by land jut, the energy of long waves is reduced by 10%-20% and that the propagation direction of long waves is changed due to the effect of topography. In the shadow zone behind the island, ocean wave can propagate along the seashore instead of perpendicular to the coastline, as shown by SAR images.     

Depth inversion in coastal water based on SAR image of waves

Wave-number spectrum technique is proposed to retrieve coastal water depths by means of Synthetic Aperture Radar （SAR） image of waves. Based on the general dispersion relation of ocean waves the wavelength changes of a surface wave over varying water depths can be derived from SAR. Approaching the analysis of SAR images of waves and using the general dispersion relation of ocean waves, this indirect technique of remote sensing bathymetry has been applied to a coastal region of Xiapu in Fujian Province, China. Results show that this technique is suitable for the coastal waters especially for the near-shore regions with variable water depths.     

Underwater topography detection of Taiwan Shoal with SAR images

Under suitable conditions of tidal current and wind, underwater topography can be detected by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) indirectly. Underwater topography SAR imaging includes three physical processes: radar ocean surface backscattering, the modulation of sea surface short wave spectrum by the variations in sea surface currents, and the modulation of sea surface currents by the underwater topography. The first process is described usually by Bragg scattering theory because the incident angle of SAR is always between 20°–70°. The second process is described by the action balance equation. The third process is described by an ocean hydrodynamic model. Based on the SAR imaging mechanism for underwater topography, an underwater topography SAR detection model and a simplified method for its calculation are introduced. In the detection model, a two-dimensional hydrodynamic model — the shallow water model is used to describe the motion of tidal current. Due to the difficulty of determining the expression of SAR backscattering cross section in which some terms can not be determined, the backscattering cross section of SAR image used in the underwater topography SAR detection is pro-processed by the simulated SAR image of the coarse-grid water depth to simplify the calculation. Taiwan Shoal, located at the southwest outlet of Taiwan Strait, is selected as an evaluation area for this technique due to the occurrence of hundreds of sand waves. The underwater topography of Taiwan Shoal was detected by two scenes of ERS-2 SAR images which were acquired on 9 January 2000 and 6 June 2004. The detection results are compared with in situ measured water depths for three profiles. The average absolute and relative errors of the best detection result are 2.23 m and 7.5 %, respectively. These show that the detection model and the simplified method introduced in the paper is feasible.     

A joint method to retrieve directional ocean wave spectra from SAR and wave spectrometer data

This paper proposes a joint method to simultaneously retrieve wave spectra at dif ferent scales from spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) and wave spectrometer data. The method combines the output from the two dif ferent sensors to overcome retrieval limitations that occur in some sea states. The wave spectrometer sensitivity coeffi cient is estimated using an ef fective signifi cant wave height(SWH), which is an average of SAR-derived and wave spectrometer-derived SWH. This averaging extends the area of the sea surface sampled by the nadir beam of the wave spectrometer to improve the accuracy of the estimated sensitivity coeffi cient in inhomogeneous sea states. Wave spectra are then retrieved from SAR data using wave spectrometer-derived spectra as fi rst guess spectra to complement the short waves lost in SAR data retrieval. In addition, the problem of 180° ambiguity in retrieved spectra is overcome using SAR imaginary cross spectra. Simulated data were used to validate the joint method. The simulations demonstrated that retrieved wave parameters, including SWH, peak wave length(PWL), and peak wave direction(PWD), agree well with reference parameters. Collocated data from ENVISAT advanced SAR(ASAR), the airborne wave spectrometer STORM, the PHAROS buoy, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting(ECMWF) were then used to verify the proposed method. Wave parameters retrieved from STORM and two ASAR images were compared to buoy and ECMWF wave data. Most of the retrieved parameters were comparable to reference parameters. The results of this study show that the proposed joint retrieval method could be a valuable complement to traditional methods used to retrieve directional ocean wave spectra, particularly in inhomogeneous sea states.     

DcNet: Dilated Convolutional Neural Networks for Side-Scan Sonar Image Semantic Segmentation

In ocean explorations, side-scan sonar(SSS) plays a very important role and can quickly depict seabed topography. Assembling the SSS to an autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV) and performing semantic segmentation of an SSS image in real time can realize online submarine geomorphology or target recognition, which is conducive to submarine detection. However, because of the complexity of the marine environment, various noises in the ocean pollute the sonar image, which also encounters the intensity inhomogeneity problem. In this paper, we propose a novel neural network architecture named dilated convolutional neural network(DcNet) that can run in real time while addressing the above-mentioned issues and providing accurate semantic segmentation. The proposed architecture presents an encoder-decoder network to gradually reduce the spatial dimension of the input image and recover the details of the target, respectively. The core of our network is a novel block connection named DCblock, which mainly uses dilated convolution and depthwise separable convolution between the encoder and decoder to attain more context while still retaining high accuracy. Furthermore, our proposed method performs a super-resolution reconstruction to enlarge the dataset with high-quality images. We compared our network to other common semantic segmentation networks performed on an NVIDIA Jetson TX2 using our sonar image datasets. Experimental results show that while the inference speed of the proposed network significantly outperforms state-of-the-art architectures, the accuracy of our method is still comparable, which indicates its potential applications not only in AUVs equipped with SSS but also in marine exploration.     

Wave Height Estimation from SAR Imagery

This paper presents a method developed for estimating wave height from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery without prior assumption of noise distribution. It is based on two-dimenslonal ocean wave spectra retrieved from fully calibrated SAR images. Wen‘s spectrum was used as first-guess wave spectrum in the retrieval process. Comparison of the estimated wave height obtained by this method from two ERS-1 SAR subimages dated 23 July 1994 with in-situ measurements showed that the method works well.     

Parameterized first-guess spectrum method for retrieving directional spectrum of swell-dominated waves and huge waves from SAR images

A method to retrieve ocean wave spectra from SAR images, named Parameterized First-guess Spectrum Method (PFSM), was proposed after interpretation of the theory to ocean wave imaging and analysis of the drawbacks of the retrieving model generally used. In this method, with additional information and satellite parameters, the separating wave-number is first calculated to determine the maximum wave-number beyond which the linear relation can be used. The separating wave-number can be calculated using the additional information on wind velocity and parameters of SAR satellite. And then the SAR spectrum can be divided into SAR spectrum of wind wave and of swell according to the result of separating wave-number. The portion of SAR spectrum generated by wind wave, is used to search for the most suitable parameters of ocean wind wave spectrum, including propagation direction of ocean wave, phase speed of dominating wave and the angle spreading coefficient. The swell spectrum is acquired by directly inversing the linear relation of ocean wave spectrum to SAR spectrum given the portion of SAR spectrum generated by swell. We used the proposed method to retrieve the ocean wave spectrum from ERS-SAR data from the South China Sea and compared the result with altimeter data. The agreement indicates that the PFSM is reliable.     

A new method for the estimation of oceanic mixed-layer depth using shipboard X-band radar images

Shipboard X-band radar images acquired on 24 June 2009 are used to study nonlinear internal wave characteristics in the northeastern South China Sea. The studied images show three nonlinear internal waves in a packet. A method based on the Radon Transform technique is introduced to calculate internal wave parameters such as the direction of propagation and internal wave velocity from backscatter images. Assuming that the ocean is a two-layer finite depth system, we can derive the mixed-layer depth by applying the internal wave velocity to the mixed-layer depth formula. Results show reasonably good agreement with in-situ thermistor chain and conductivity-temperature-depth data sets.     

Underwater Object Recognition Based on Deep Encoding-Decoding Network

Ocean underwater exploration is a part of oceanography that investigates the physical and biological conditions for scientific and commercial purposes. And video technology plays an important role and is extensively applied for underwater environment observation. Different from the conventional methods, video technology explores the underwater ecosystem continuously and non-invasively. However, due to the scattering and attenuation of light transport in the water, complex noise distribution and lowlight condition cause challenges for underwater video applications including object detection and recognition. In this paper, we propose a new deep encoding-decoding convolutional architecture for underwater object recognition. It uses the deep encoding-decoding network for extracting the discriminative features from the noisy low-light underwater images. To create the deconvolutional layers for classification, we apply the deconvolution kernel with a matched feature map, instead of full connection, to solve the problem of dimension disaster and low accuracy. Moreover, we introduce data augmentation and transfer learning technologies to solve the problem of data starvation. For experiments, we investigated the public datasets with our proposed method and the state-of-the-art methods. The results show that our work achieves significant accuracy. This work provides new underwater technologies applied for ocean exploration.     

INTERNAL TIDES, SOLITARY WAVES AND BORES IN SHALLOW SEAS

Remote sensing and in situ observations of internal tides, solitary waves and bores in shallow water are briefly reviewed in this paper. The emphasis is laid on interpreting SAR images based on oceanographic measurements, and analyzing characteristics of internal waves in the China Seas. Direc-tions for future research are discussed.     

Depression and elevation internal solitary waves in a two-layer fluid and their forces on cylindrical piles

Both large amplitude depression and elevation internal solitary waves (ISWs) were observed on the continental shelf of the northwest South China Sea (SCS) during the Wenchang Internal Wave Experiment. In this study, we investigate the characteristics of depression and elevation ISWs based on comparisons between observational results and internal wave theories. It is suggested that the large amplitude depression wave is better represented by the extended Korteweg-de Vries (EKdV) theory than by the KdV model, whereas the large amplitude elevation wave is in better agreement with the KdV equation than with the EKdV theory. Wave-induced forces on a supposed small-diameter cylindrical pile by depression and elevation waves are also estimated using the internal wave theory and Morison formula. The wave-induced force by elevation ISWs is rarely reported in the literature. It is found that the force induced by the elevation wave differs significantly from that by the depression wave, and the elevation wave generally produces greater force on the pile in the lower water column than the depression wave. These results show that ISWs in the study area can present a serious threat to ocean engineering structures, and should not be ignored in the design of oil platforms and ocean operations.     

Analysis of Dynamic Characteristics of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road

The 21st century Maritime Silk Road(MSR) proposed by China strongly promotes the maritime industry. In this paper, we use wind and ocean wave datasets from 1979 to 2014 to analyze the spatial and temporal distributions of the wind speed, significant wave height(SWH), mean wave direction(MWD), and mean wave period(MWP) in the MSR. The analysis results indicate that the Luzon Strait and Gulf of Aden have the most obvious seasonal variations and that the central Indian Ocean is relatively stable. We analyzed the distributions of the maximum wind speed and SWH in the MSR over this 36-year period. The results show that the distribution of the monthly average frequency for SWH exceeds 4 m(huge waves) and that of the corresponding wind speed exceeds 13.9 ms~(-1)(high wind speed). The occurrence frequencies of huge waves and high winds in regions east of the Gulf of Aden are as high as 56% and 80%, respectively. We also assessed the wave and wind energies in different seasons. Based on our analyses, we propose a risk factor(RF) for determining navigation safety levels, based on the wind speed and SWH. We determine the spatial and temporal RF distributions for different seasons and analyze the corresponding impact on four major sea routes. Finally, we determine the spatial distribution of tropical cyclones from 2000 to 2015 and analyze the corresponding impact on the four sea routes. The analysis of the dynamic characteristics of the MSR provides references for ship navigation as well as ocean engineering.     

Wave effect on the ocean circulations through mass transport and wave-induced pumping

The wave Coriolis-Stokes-Force-modified ocean momentum equations are reviewed in this paper and the wave Stokes transport is pointed out to be part of the ocean circulations. Using the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts 40-year reanalysis data (ERA-40 data) and the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) version 2.2.4 data, the magnitude of this transport is compared with that of wind-driven Sverdrup transport and a 5-to-10-precent contribution by the wave Stokes transport is found. Both transports are stronger in boreal winter than in summers. The wave effect can be either contribution or cancellation in different seasons. Examination with Kuroshio transport verifies similar seasonal variations. The clarification of the efficient wave boundary condition helps to understand the role of waves in mass transport. It acts as surface wind stress and can be functional down to the bottom of the ageostrophic layer. The pumping velocities resulting from wave-induced stress are zonally distributed and are significant in relatively high latitudes. Further work will focus on the model performance of the wave-stress-changed-boundary and the role of swells in the eastern part of the oceans.     

The effect of current and wave on whitecap coverage via relative speed： the Atlantic Ocean case

Whitecapping plays an important role in many air-sea exchange and upper ocean processes. Traditionally, whitecap coverage is parameterized as a function of wind speed only. At present, the relative speed of ocean current to wind is considered to be important in the air-sea exchange parameterization which is the function of wind speed only. In this paper, the effects of ocean surface velocity (current velocity and wave induced velocity) and the wave parameters on whitecap coverage through relative speeds are investigated, by applying a 2-parameter whitecap coverage model to the Atlantic Ocean. It is found that the impacts of both current and wave on whitecap coverage are considerable in the most part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is interesting that the effect of wave is more significant than that of current.     

基于深度卷积网络和分水岭分割的耕地地块识别方法

耕地地块作为精准农业的重要支撑,现有地块边界大多依靠人工勾绘。随着遥感技术的发展,基于遥感影像自动提取耕地地块成为研究主要方向,其中基于深度学习的方法能够克服传统检测方法难以适应复杂场景的局限而被广泛使用,但现有检测方法仍存在问题,基于深度卷积模型直接识别耕地区域会丢失内部边界、而基于边缘检测模型识别耕地边界时则会同时得到大量无关边界;此外,现有的基于阈值提取地块的策略所提取的地块不够规整,存在内陷的问题。针对上述问题,本研究提出一种基于深度卷积网络和分水岭分割的耕地地块提取方法,从信息检测和地块提取两方面进行改进：(1)将耕地边界视作一种地物类别,在深度卷积网络中进行类别概率检测,帮助实现对耕地边界的语义识别。(2)基于改进后的D-LinknetXt网络进行检测,其网络架构适合于对耕地边界这类线性目标的提取,同时更换原始D-Linknet网络的残差单元,帮助提高了网络的特征提取能力。(3)基于分水岭分割对耕地地块进行提取,利用了区域分割方法获取边界的封闭性,并且这种以区域为单元进行分割并合并的方式,解决了原有方法在像元尺度上基于阈值提取所遇到的提取地块存在内陷的问题,使地块更规整准确...     

Distribution of vertical turbulent mixing parameter caused by internal tidal waves and solitary waves in the South Yellow Sea

Many observations show that in the Yellow Sea internal tidal waves (ITWs) possess the remarkable characteristics of internal Kelvin wave, and in the South Yellow Sea (SYS) the nonlinear evolution of internal tidal waves is one of the mechanisms producing internal solitary waves (ISWs), which is different from the generation mechanism in the case where the semidiurnal tidal current flows over topographic drops. In this paper, the model of internal Kelvin wave with continuous stratification is given, and an elementary numerical study of nonlinear evolution of ITWs is made for the SYS, using the generalized KdV model (GKdV model for short) for a continuous stratified ocean, in which the different effects of background barotropic ebb and flood currents are considered. Moreover, the parameterization of vertical turbulent mixing caused by ITWs and ISWs in the SYS is studied, using a parameterization scheme which was applied to numerical experiments on the breaking of ISWs by Vlasenko and Hutter in 2002. It is found that the vertical turbulent mixing caused by internal waves is very strong within the upper layer with depth less than about 30m, and the vertical turbulent mixing caused by ISWs is stronger than that by ITWs.     

Comparison and analysis of Envisat ASAR ocean wave spectra with buoy data in the northern Pacific Ocean

The validation and assessment of Envisat advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) ocean wave spectra products are important to their application in ocean wave numerical predictions. Six-year ASAR wave spectra data are compared with one-dimensional (1D) wave spectra of 55 co-located moored buoy observations in the northern Pacific Ocean. The ASAR wave spectra data are firstly quality control filtered and spatio-temporal matched with buoy data. The comparisons are then performed in terms of 1D wave spectra, significant wave height (SWH) and mean wave period (MWP) in different spatio-temporal offsets respectively. SWH comparison results show the evident dependence of SWH biases on wind speed and the ASAR SWH saturation effect. The ASAR wave spectra tend to underestimate SWH at high wind speeds and overestimate SWH at low wind speeds. MWP comparison results show that MWP has a systematic bias and therefore it should be bias-modified before used. The comparisons of 1D wave spectra show that both wave spectra agree better at low frequencies than at high frequencies, which indicates the ASAR data cannot resolve the high frequency waves.     

基于分层极限学习机影像转换的多源影像变化检测方法

为提高现有多源影像无监督变化检测方法存在的检测结果易受噪声影响和计算效率低等问题,本文提出了一种基于分层极限学习机影像转换的多源影像变化检测方法。分层极限学习机（Hierarchical Extreme Learning Machine,HELM）通过多层前向编码获得丰富的特征表示,且当特征提取完成即可确定网络参数。本文方法首先通过对合成孔径雷达（Synthetic Aperture Radar,SAR）影像进行对数转换,以获得与光学影像相同的影像噪声分布,并利用影像平滑减少影像噪声对变化检测结果的影响;然后分别对多源影像进行聚类分析,通过对比两时相影像的聚类图获得初始变化检测图,选取初始变化检测图中的未变化区域的像元作为初始训练样本,构建训练样本修正模型修正初始训练样本以提高训练样本的准确性;引入HELM以实现多源影像特征空间转换,获取多时相空间转换影像,提高了算法效率;最后通过对比原始影像和多时相空间转换影像获取变化信息。两组多源影像(Google Earth和哨兵1号影像)的实验结果表明：与现有方法相比,本文方法的Kappa系数分别至少提高了6.19%和8.94%,证明了本文方法...     

A FVCOM-based unstructured grid wave, current, sediment transport model, I. Model description and validation

An effort was made to couple FVCOM (a three-dimensional (3D),unstructured grid,Finite Volume Coastal Ocean Model) and FVCOM-SWAVE (an unstructured grid,finite-volume surface wave model) for the study of nearshore ocean processes such as tides,circulation,storm surge,waves,sediment transport,and morphological evolution.The coupling between FVCOM and FVCOM-SWAVE was achieved through incorporating 3D radiation stress,wave-current-sediment-related bottom boundary layer,sea surface stress parameterizations,and morphology process.FVCOM also includes a 3D sediment transport module.With accurate fitting of irregular coastlines,the model provides a unique tool to study sediment dynamics in coastal ocean,estuaries,and wetlands where local geometries are characterized by inlets,islands,and intertidal marsh zones.The model was validated by two standard benchmark tests: 1) spectral waves approaching a mild sloping beach and 2) morphological changes of seabed in an idealized tidal inlet.In Test 1,model results were compared with both analytical solutions and laboratory experiments.A further comparison was also made with the structured grid Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS),which provides an insight into the performance of the two models with the same open boundary forcing.     

基于光滑粒子流体动力学算法的海浪建模仿真研究

针对传统海浪建模方法中存在海洋表面真实感差、计算复杂的问题,本文进行了基于光滑粒子流体动力学算法（SPH）与移动立方体算法（MC）相结合的海浪建模仿真研究。通过基于空间网格的粒子分配,建立了粒子群单向列表存储结构,在海浪粒子物理量计算时,实现了其光滑核半径内粒子群的快速检索,并基于拉格朗日流体控制方程,进行了海浪粒子受力分析及状态计算;在模拟海浪与环境障碍物碰撞时,将碰撞问题简化为粒子在一定时间段内所经过的路径与障碍物表面三角面片是否相交来进行判定,并假设粒子为理想刚体,采用改进的欧拉方法实现了粒子新位置的动态计算;为增强海浪流体模拟的真实感,在移动立方体节点密度动态计算基础上,依据确定的海浪表面密度阈值,耦合MC算法进行了海浪表面的动态提取,从而实现了海浪三维表面建模与动态演变仿真。通过模拟验证了该算法的时效性与可行性,可为海洋环境信息三维可视化提供一定的参考。