Clare , M.A. and Vardy , M.E. and Cartigny , M.J.B. and Talling , P.J. and Himsworth , M.D. and Dix, J.K. and Harris, J.M. and Whitehouse, R.J.S. and Belal, M. (2017) 'Direct monitoring of active geohazards : emerging geophysical tools for deep-water assessments.', Near surface geophysics., 15 (4). pp. 427-444.
Abstract
Seafloor networks of cables, pipelines, and other infrastructure underpin our daily lives, providing communication links, information, and energy supplies. Despite their global importance, these networks are vulnerable to damage by a number of natural seafloor hazards, including landslides, turbidity currents, fluid flow, and scour. Conventional geophysical techniques, such as high-resolution reflection seismic and side-scan sonar, are commonly employed in geohazard assessments. These conventional tools provide essential information for route planning and design; however, such surveys provide only indirect evidence of past processes and do not observe or measure the geohazard itself. As such, many numerical-based impact models lack field-scale calibration, and much uncertainty exists about the triggers, nature, and frequency of deep-water geohazards. Recent advances in technology now enable a step change in their understanding through direct monitoring. We outline some emerging monitoring tools and how they can quantify key parameters for deepwater geohazard assessment. Repeat seafloor surveys in dynamic areas show that solely relying on evidence from past deposits can lead to an under-representation of the geohazard events. Acoustic Doppler current profiling provides new insights into the structure of turbidity currents, whereas instrumented mobile sensors record the nature of movement at the base of those flows for the first time. Existing and bespoke cabled networks enable high bandwidth, low power, and distributed measurements of parameters such as strain across large areas of seafloor. These techniques provide valuable new measurements that will improve geohazard assessments and should be deployed in a complementary manner alongside conventional geophysical tools.
Item Type: | Article |
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Full text: | (VoR) Version of Record Available under License - Creative Commons Attribution. Download PDF (1396Kb) |
Status: | Peer-reviewed |
Publisher Web site: | https://doi.org/10.3997/1873-0604.2017033 |
Publisher statement: | © 2017 Authors. Near Surface Geophysics is published by European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers This is a Gold Open Access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Date accepted: | 30 June 2017 |
Date deposited: | 18 October 2017 |
Date of first online publication: | 31 August 2017 |
Date first made open access: | 18 October 2017 |
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