Application of geoacoustic inference to assess the diurnal effects of photosynthetic activity in a seagrass meadow

Seagrasses provide a multitude of ecosystem services: they alter water flow, cycle nutrients, stabilize sediments, support the food web structure, and provide a critical habitat for many animals. However, due to threats to seagrass meadows and their associated ecosystems, these habitats are declining globally. Acoustical methods can be a powerful remote sensing tool to efficiently monitor seagrass meadows, alleviating the problem of space and time aliasing associated with traditional spot measurements. The acoustic field is highly sensitive to the presence of gas bubbles in liquids, which result in acoustic dispersion, absorption, and scattering. The biological processes and physical characteristics associated with seagrass result in trapped gases, which are present in the aerenchyma of seagrass leaves, roots, and rhizomes as well as in freely floating bubbles in the water. To investigate the use of acoustical methods to monitor ecosystem health, an experiment was conducted in the Lower Laguna Madre where...