Mapping sediment acoustic impedance using remote sensing acoustic techniques in a shallow-water carbonate environment

 Real-time trackline plots of surficial sediment acoustic impedance delineate several sedimentary facies off Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas. The sea floor within a 6×6 km surveyed area consists of carbonate muds (silts), sands and shell, rock, and live corals. The 4-kHz acoustic data supports this finding by providing a pictographic representation of the distribution and structure of several sediment facies types. Plotting the gridded acoustic data with commercial mapping software (Surfer) provides a three-dimensional (3D) perspective of the bottom topography with a color contour map of surficial sediment impedance (upper 0.4 m) draped over the 3D surface.     

Ageostrophic dynamics of the upper ocean layer: Measurements over the transatlantic section along 53° N

Some aspects of the upper ocean layer dynamics are considered, including the Ekman transport, the relation of the thickness of the quasi-homogeneous layer to the thickness of the layer of rotation of the drift current vector, and the correlation between the level of the turbulent energy dissipation and the thickness of the quasi-homogeneous layer.     

Sediment-starved sand ridges on a mixed carbonate/siliciclastic inner shelf off west-central Florida

High-resolution side-scan mosaics, sediment analyses, and physical process data have revealed that the mixed carbonate/siliciclastic, inner shelf of west-central Florida supports a highly complex field of active sand ridges mantled by a hierarchy of bedforms. The sand ridges, mostly oriented obliquely to the shoreline trend, extend from 2 km to over 25 km offshore. They show many similarities to their well-known counterparts situated along the US Atlantic margin in that both increase in relief with increasing water depth, both are oriented obliquely to the coast, and both respond to modern shelf dynamics. There are significant differences in that the sand ridges on the west-central Florida shelf are smaller in all dimensions, have a relatively high carbonate content, and are separated by exposed rock surfaces. They are also shoreface-detached and are sediment-starved, thus stunting their development. Morphological details are highly distinctive and apparent in side-scan imagery due to the high acoustic contrast. The seafloor is active and not a relict system as indicated by: (1) relatively young AMS ¹⁴C dates (<1600 yr BP) from forams in the shallow subsurface (1.6 meters below seafloor), (2) apparent shifts in sharply distinctive grayscale boundaries seen in time-series side-scan mosaics, (3) maintenance of these sharp acoustic boundaries and development of small bedforms in an area of constant and extensive bioturbation, (4) sediment textural asymmetry indicative of selective transport across bedform topography, (5) morphological asymmetry of sand ridges and 2D dunes, and (6) current-meter data indicating that the critical threshold velocity for sediment transport is frequently exceeded. Although larger sand ridges are found along other portions of the west-central Florida inner shelf, these smaller sand ridges are best developed seaward of a major coastal headland, suggesting some genetic relationship. The headland may focus and accelerate the N–S reversing currents. An elevated rock terrace extending from the headland supports these ridges in a shallower water environment than the surrounding shelf, allowing them to be more easily influenced by currents and surface gravity waves. Tidal currents, storm-generated flows, and seasonally developed flows are shore-parallel and oriented obliquely to the NW–SE trending ridges, indicating that they have developed as described by the Huthnance model. Although inner shelf sand ridges have been extensively examined elsewhere, this study is the first to describe them in a low-energy, sediment-starved, dominantly mixed siliciclastic/carbonate sedimentary environment situated on a former limestone platform.     

Spectra of the Black-Sea tsunamis

We perform the analysis of the time spectra of four tsunamis generated in the Black Sea by the earthquakes of 26.07.1927, 11.09.1927, 26.12.1939, and 12.07.1966. For the analysis of the spectra, we used digitized marigrams obtained for 12 points of the Black-Sea coast. The obtained spectra are, as a rule, multimode and have 1–4 spectral maxima. One maximum corresponds to the periods typical of tsunami waves and the other maxima correspond to the oscillations of the sea level with lower frequencies. It seems likely that the events of tsunami are accompanied by low-frequency oscillations of the level caused by the atmospheric forcing, seiches, or other factors. In numerous cases, the oscillations from the predominant energy range lie outside the characteristic range of periods of the tsunami waves. __________ Translated from Morskoi Gidrofizicheskii Zhurnal, No. 5, pp. 21–30, September–October, 2007.     

Characteristics of Salter's cam for extracting energy from ocean waves

The performance of Salter's cam as an energy extractor from ocean waves is studied numerically on the basis of linear theory of surface waves and floating bodies. Quantities of engineering interest such as efficiency, induced motion and reaction forces are presented and discussed both for fixed and for partly constrained cam shafts.     

A modified linear analysis of a wave-energy conversion buoy

The analysis of a pneumatic-type wave-energy conversion buoy is developed assuming independence of the buoy heaving motion and the motion of the water column within the center pipe. Results of the analysis are then compared with experimental data in a study of the relative air velocity within the turbine passage. The results compare very well. The effect of the variation of the center pipe length is found to be significant for periods about the surge chamber resonance but is negligible in the neighborhood of the heaving resonance period. Further, the theory is applied to a prototype buoy study of the U.S. Coast Guard, and a dimensionless design curve is developed from the results of the prototype analysis.     

The hydrogen sulphide boundary in the Black Sea in the 1920s and 1980s

Maps of the boundary topography for anaerobic waters in the Black Sea are plotted for the summers of the 1920s and 1980s. The mean depths of the H₂S boundary for this period are determined. It is shown that the variation in the distribution and average location of the hydrogen sulphide zone has remained constant for the last 60 years.Translated by Mikhail M. Trufanov.     

Errors in recent ocean tide models: possible origin and cause

Recently, the TOPEX/POSEIDON Science Working Team has recommended the FES95.2.1 and CSR3.0 ocean tide models for reprocessing the TOPEX/POSEIDON Geophysical Data Records. Without doubt, the performance of these models, especially in the deep oceans, is excellent. However, from a comparison of these hydrodynamically consistent models with the purely empirical DW3.2 and DEOS96.1 models, it appears that FES95.2.1 and CSR3.0 are affected by basin boundary related errors which are caused by the basin-wise solution procedure of the FES ocean tide model series. In their turn, the empirical DW3.2 and DEOS96.1 models seem to suffer from significant errors in the Antarctic seas due to the seasonal growth and decay of Antarctic sea ice. Also, bathymetry-induced differences were found between the hydrodynamically consistent models and the empirical models. Concerning these differences, TOPEX/POSEIDON and ERS-1 crossover statistics unfortunately do not provide conclusive results on which models are in error.