Hydrographic reconaissance of large undersea topography using scattered acoustic energy

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Abstract
The TOPO test series was designed to measure reverberation from a variety of large-scale topographic features. From this research, an acoustic experimental and processing technique is developing which is applicable to wide-area hydrographic reconnaissance. Results from TOPO ONE are presented to illustrate the potential technique. A towed array receiver and explosive sources were used to obtain data covering a 1 000 000-square nautical mile area of a Pacific basin northeast of New Zealand. After filtering and beamforming, the processing provides spatial stabilization of beams and averaging over multiple shots to correct for left/right ambiguities and to create basin-wide mappings of the major scatterers. The resulting latitude-longitude display of the location and strength of major scatterers reveals both known and uncharted features. From TOPO ONE, isolated, uncharted seamounts appear within the basin and a section of the Louisville Ridge, previously contoured as an elongated plateau, is revealed to be a series of separate peaks. Subsequently, the New Zealand Navy has verified, by depth sounding, the existence of these features first identified in the acoustic data.

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