A review of acoustic techniques for habitat mapping

Habitat mapping has become an increasingly important application of remote sensing. Active and passive acoustic techniques have greatly improved in the last decade, and their use extends into other spheres to show their economic, legal, political and environmental benefits. This paper reviews the current status of acoustic techniques for habitat mapping. Traditional techniques include echosounders, multibeam systems and sidescan sonars. Passive techniques are also presented, along with geoacoustic inversion and acoustic daylight imaging. The developments in new techniques such as non-linear acoustics, synthetic aperture and interferometry are reviewed. Some emerging techniques are showing increasing potential for habitat mapping, and bistatic sonar, parametric SAS and 3-D chirp profiling are briefly reviewed. Leading international programmes are now making use of these techniques, most often in combination, and their results inform the recommendations for future uses and desired technological developments.