Abstract
To many ocean acousticians, shallow water is “water a few acoustic wavelengths in depth, where the normal mode description of the sound field is efficient.” To some of our physical oceanographer friends, shallow water is taken as the portion of the sea that extends from the shore to the continental shelf break. A rather jaundiced geologist once described the entire water column (including shallow water) as “a bothersome thin layer of fluid that obscures the really interesting part of the ocean.” All these definitions have some merit (including the last, if you are a geologist), but they are not the definition we will use. Rather, we will be looking at the region from the end of the surf zone out to the continental shelf break (and even onto the slope to ~500 m depth) as our working definition of shallow water. This is done for pragmatic reasons, having to do with the types of sonar systems that work for given purposes in those depths. Acoustically, we will be looking at sound and sonar systems working from ~50 Hz up to about 5 kHz. Incorporating these limits on depth and frequency bounds our technical area of “shallow water acoustics,” but even with these limits, the field is a rather vast one.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Barridge R., Weinberg G. (1977) Horizontal rays and vertical modes In: Wave propagation and underwater acoustics, ed J.B. Keller and J.S. Papadakis [Springer-Verlag, pp. 86–150]
DeSanto J.A. (ed) (1979) Ocean Acoustics [Springer-Verlag]
Diachok O.I., Smith P., Wales S. (2004) Classification of bioacoustic absorption lines at low frequencies: the Van Holiday connection [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Vol. 115, pp. 2521]
Hamilton E.L. (1985) Sound velocity as a function of depth in marine sediment [J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 78(4), pp. 1348–1355]
F. Jensen, W. Kuperman, M. Porter, and H. Schmidt, (1994). “Computational Ocean Acoustics”, AIP Press, 612 pages
Keller J.B. and Papadakis J.S. (1977) Wave propagation and underwater acoustics [Springer-Verlag, 287 p.]
Kutschale, H.W. (1973) “Rapid computation by wave theory of propagation loss in the Arctic ocean. Rep CU.8-73, Columbia university, Palisades, NY
Lynch J. Colosi J, Gawarkiewicz G., Duda T., Pierce A., Badiey M., Katznelson B., Miller J., Siegmann W.,.Chiu C, and Newhall A., (2004), “Consideration of fine-scale coastal oceanography and 3-D acoustics for the ESME sound exposure model,” [IEEE J. Oceanic. Eng’g., 31(1), 33–48.]
D. M. Milder, (1969) “Ray and wave invariants for SOFAR channel propagation,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 46, 1259–1263
Munk, W., and C. Wunsch (1983), Ocean Acoustic Tomography: Rays and Modes, Rev. Geophys., 21(4), 777–793.
Ocean acoustics (ed) L.M. Brekhovskikh. (1974) Moscow, Nauka, in Russian
Pekeris C.L. (1948) Theory of propagation of explosive sound in shallow water [Geol. Soc. Am. Mem., Vol. 27, pp. 1–117]
Pierce A.D. (1965) Extension of the method of normal modes to sound propagation in almost-stratified medium [J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 37, pp. 19–27]
Robinson I.S. (1994) Satellite Oceanography [Wiley-Praxis Series in Remote Sensing, Chichester, 455 p]
Densmore C. Dana, (1995) “The A Boat”,. The Village Printer, Falmouth, MA. 195 pages.
Schmidt H., (1988).SAFARI: Seismo-Acoustic Fast field Algorithm for Range-Independent Environments, SACLANTCEN REPORT,SR-113.
Tappert F.D. (1977), “The parabolic approximation method,” in Wave Propagation and Underwater Acoustics, edited by J. B. Keller and J. S. Papadakis, Lecture Notes in Physics 70 Springer-Verlag, New York
Tindle C.T., Weston D.E. (1980) Connection of acoustic beam displacement cycle distance and attenuation for rays and normal modes [J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 67(5), pp. 1614–1622]
Michelson, E. ; Dozier, L. ; Stokes, A. ; Green, R., (1981) “Bottom Loss Upgrade”, SAIC Technical Report, ADA099478, May.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Katsnelson, B., Petnikov, V., Lynch, J. (2012). What Is Shallow Water Acoustics?. In: Fundamentals of Shallow Water Acoustics. The Underwater Acoustics Series. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9777-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9777-7_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-9776-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-9777-7
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)