Broadband acoustic propagation in a seagrass meadow throughout a diurnal cycle

2019 
Acoustic propagation in seagrass meadows is sensitive to gas produced by photosynthesis and respiration. In addition to gas volumes within the seagrass, bubbles are introduced into the water as oxygen diffuses through the plant tissue, leading to dispersion, absorption, and scattering of sound. Because the oxygen production cycle is largely driven by sunlight, these acoustical effects have a diurnal dependence. Previous work has examined the use of acoustics as a remote sensing tool for monitoring the seagrass photosynthetic activity (Hermand, 2004). In the present paper, we describe an acoustic propagation experiment conducted in a Thalassia testudinum meadow in the Lower Laguna Madre, a shallow bay on the Texas Gulf of Mexico coast. A spherical omnidirectional source transmitted frequency-modulated chirps (0.1 kHz to 100 kHz) every 10 min for a 24-h period, during which oceanographic probes measured water temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen. The received acoustic signals were match-filtered to o...
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