What is it about?
The presence of organisms living in the upper-most layer of ocean bottom sediments can effect the acoustic properties of the material, and cause it to differ from the properties found in the same material absent any organisms living there in the past of present. Such organisms are called "infauna."
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Why is it important?
As performance requirements for sonar increase to meet the demands of ever-more difficult acoustic tasks, knowledge of what used to be thought of as minor perturbations (the effect of infauna, for example) are becoming more and more important. This work is a beginning look at what the acoustics effects are for some types of infauna.
Perspectives
There are a large number of organisms and they create a wide range of physical changes in the sediment, which in turn effect the acoustic properties of the sediment. This paper uses the notion of acoustically relevant groups (such as acoustically small or large, acoustically hard or soft, structuring or mixing) to begin to organize cause and effect.
Preston Wilson
The University of Texas at Austin
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Preliminary characterization of surficial sediment acoustic properties and infauna in the New England Mud Patch, January 2016, Acoustical Society of America (ASA),
DOI: 10.1121/2.0000486.
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