ALBERT

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2015

Description: The spatial and temporal evolution of stratified shear instabilities is quantified in a highly stratified and energetic estuary. The measurements are made using high-resolution acoustic backscatter from an array composed of six calibrated broadband transducers connected to a six-channel high-frequency (120-600 kHz) broadband acoustic backscatter system. The array was mounted on the bottom of the estuary and looking upward. The spatial and temporal evolution of the waves is described in terms of their wavelength, amplitude and turbulent dissipation as a function of space and time. The observed waves reach an arrested growth stage nearly 10 times faster than laboratory and numerical experiments performed at much lower Reynolds number. High turbulent dissipation rates are observed within the braid regions of the waves, consistent with the rapid transition to arrested growth. Further, it appears that the waves do not undergo periodic doubling and do not collapse once their maximum amplitude is reached. Under some conditions long internal waves may provide the perturbation that decreases the gradient Richardson number so as to initiate shear instability. The initial Richardson number for the observed instabilities is likely between 0.1 and 0.2 based on the slope and growth rate of the shear instabilities.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2014

Description: Motivated by inspection of complex underwater environments, we have developed a system for multi-sensor SLAM utilizing both structured and unstructured environmental features. We present a system for deriving planar constraints from sonar data, and jointly optimizing the vehicle and plane positions as nodes in a factor graph. We also present a system for outlier rejection and smoothing of 3D sonar data, and for generating loop closure constraints based on the alignment of smoothed submaps. Our factor graph SLAM backend combines loop closure constraints from sonar data with detections of visual fiducial markers from camera imagery, and produces an online estimate of the full vehicle trajectory and landmark positions. We evaluate our technique on an inspection of a decomissioned aircraft carrier, as well as synthetic data and controlled indoor experiments, demonstrating improved trajectory estimates and reduced reprojection error in the final 3D map.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2014

Description: Underwater acoustic communication is an extremely complex field that faces many challenges due to the time-varying nature of the ocean environment. Vector sensors are a proven technology that when utilizing their directional sensing capabilities allows us to minimize the effect of interfering noise sources. A traditional pressure sensor array has been the standard for years but suffers at degraded signal to noise ratios (SNR) and requires maneuvers or a lengthly array aperture to direction find. This thesis explores the effect of utilizing a vector sensor array to steer to the direction of signal arrival and the effect it has on equalization of the signal at degraded SNRs. It was demonstrated that utilizing a single vector sensor we were able steer to the direction of arrival and improve the ability of an equalizer to determine the transmitted signal. This improvement was most prominent when the SNR was degraded to levels of 0 and 10 dB where the performance of the vector sensor outperformed that of the pressure sensor in nearly 100% of cases. Finally, this performance improvement occured with a savings in computational expense.

Description: ONR Grants #N00014-11-10426 and #N00014-07-10738

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2014

Description: Observations suggest that during the last deglaciation (roughly 20,000-10,000 years ago) the Earth warmed substantially, global sea level rose approximately 100 meters in response to melting ice sheets and glaciers, and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increased. This interval may provide an analog for the evolution of future climate. The ocean plays a key role in the modern climate system by storing and transporting heat, salt, and nutrients, but its role during the last deglaciation remains uncertain. Prominent signals of the last deglaciation in the ocean are a gradual warming and a decrease of the seawater oxygen isotope ratio 18O (a signature of melting land ice sheets). These changes do not occur uniformly in the ocean, but propagate like plumes of dye over hundreds and thousands of years, the aggregate results of turbulent advective and diffusive processes. Information about changing temperatures and oxygen isotopes is stored in the shells of benthic organisms recovered in ocean sediment cores. This thesis develops and applies an inverse framework for understanding deglacial oxygen isotope records derived from sediment cores in terms of the Green functions of ocean tracer transport and ocean mixed layer boundary conditions. Singular value decomposition is used to find a solution for global mixed layer tracer concentration histories that is constrained by eight last-deglacial sediment core records and a model of the modern ocean tracer transport. The solution reflects the resolving power of the data, which is highest at model surface locations associated with large rates of volume flux into the deep ocean. The limited data resolution is quantified and rationalized through analyses of simple models. The destruction of information contained in tracers is a generic feature of advective-diffusive systems. Quantifying limitations of tracer records is important for making and understanding inferences about the long-term evolution of the ocean.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 1993

Description: There is a growing consensus that the sound generated by breaking waves is responsible for much of the ambient noise level in the ocean. While numerous field measurements have shown a strong correlation between the ambient noise spectrum level (N) in the range 100Hz to 25kHz and wind speed in the ocean, very little has been done to establish a comparable correlation between the ambient noise spectrum level and surface wave field parameters. The difficulty in establishing this relationship is remarkable given that the frequency and intensity of wave breaking are dependent on the characteristics of the wave field. In Fall 1991, an experiment was conducted from the research platform Flip 130 kilometers off the coast of Oregon, where the ambient noise between 2.5 and 25 kHz, the wind speed, and the sea surface elevation using wire wave gauges were measured. The correlation between N and the root mean square wave amplitude a was found to be poor but could be improved if the swell was filtered out from the wave elevation time series. The influence of swell on the value of a was disproportionate to the level of ambient noise since its characteristics were not directly due to the local wind-wave conditions. Observations of the dependence of the high frequency wind waves and the directional wave spectrum under turning winds suggested that the high frequency wave components responded more quickly to changes in the wind speed and wind direction than the energy-containing frequencies. The ambient noise level also correlated well with the root mean square wave slopes. This is consistent with previous laboratory measurements which showed that the steepness of a packet of waves correlates with the strength of wave breaking and with characteristics of breaking waves such as loss of momentum flux, dissipation, initial volume of air entrained, mixing, and sound generation. Comparisons of surface wave dissipation estimates using field measurements and models developed by Phillips (1985) and Hasselmann (1974) show that although the two models have very different forms, they give values that are comparable in magnitude. The relationship between the ambient noise level and log of dissipation give correlation coefficients (0.93-0.95) that are comparable to those between ambient noise and wind speed. The mean square acoustic pressure was shown to vary with the dissipation, with p2 ∝ D0.6-0.8. The results suggest that measurements of ambient sound may prove to be useful in inferring surface wave dissipation.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1997

Description: Acoustic propagation in the ocean inevitably encounters inhomogeneities of various types, which give rise to scattering. Acoustic scattering from rough water /bottom interfaces comprised of exposed rocks and sea mountains gives way to volumetric scattering in areas with fiat interfaces and thick sediment cover. The data analysis of the ARSRP backscattering experiment revealed that random inhomogeneities in two irregular layers beneath the seafloor were the primary contributors to oblique backscattering in a sediment pond on the western flank of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In this thesis, an attempt has been made to model monostatic backscattering from 3-D volume inhomogeneities in the sediment and to compare the results with the ARSRP backscattering data. A scattering process cannot be modeled correctly without a proper account of the incident field . Several approximate propagation models have been evaluated against the exact solution, while the appropriateness of using the equivalent surface scattering strength in volume scattering characterizations is studied. This study concludes that precautions need to be taken in modeling both the propagation effects and the scattering mechanisms associated with the bottom volume scattering process. A volume scattering model based on perturbation theory and the Born approximation is developed incorporating contributions from both sound speed and density fluctuations. With the propagation part handled accurately by OASES and random fluctuations generated effectively by a new scheme modified from the spectral method, the model is capable of simulating the monostatic backscattered field and time series due to 3-D volumetric sediment inhomogeneities. Both the characteristic length scale and power spectrum descriptions of the random inhomogeneities are shown to have great impact on the backscattered field by parameter studies in a free-space scenario. The important roles played by horizontal anisotropy and the vertical correlation of the random field have been demonstrated. Density fluctuations are further confirmed to be the dominant force in backscattering. The model matches the ARSRP backscattering data very well, with the fluctuations of sound speed and density in the two irregular layers described by a power law type of power spectrum.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 1997

Description: This work is concerned with coherent communication by means of acoustic signals over underwater communication channels. The estimated scattering functions of real data ranging from the Arctic environment to tropical waters show that underwater communication channels can not be captured by a single, simple channel model. This thesis considers mainly a subset of underwater communication channels where the Doppler spread is more severe than the delay spread. An appropriate representation of the linear time- variant channel is introduced, and the wide sense stationary uncorrelated scattering (WSSUS) channel assumption enables characterization in terms of scattering functions. The concept of Doppler lines, which are frequency domain filters, is used in the derivation of a receiver for Doppler spread channels. The channel is simulated by means of a ray representation for the acoustic field and a time-variant FIR filter. The impact of physical ocean processes on the Doppler spread is demonstrated, and from this modeling explanations for the Doppler spread observed in real data are obtained. A decision feedback equalizer (DFE) adapted with recursive least squares (RLS) is analyzed, and its limit with respect to pure Doppler spread is found. By using the DFE with a phase locked loop (PLL) suboptimal system behavior is found, and this is verified on real data. In the case of a simple Doppler shift the cross-ambiguity function is used to estimate the shift, and the received signal is phase rotated to compensate this before it enters the receiver. A modified RLS called the time updated RLS (TU-RLS) is presented, and it is used in a new receiver. This receiver is initialized by means of the cross-ambiguity function and the performance is characterized by probability of decoding error vs delay spread, Doppler spread and SNR. The receiver uses Doppler lines to compensate both discrete and continuous Doppler spread. The receiver stability depends on the conditioning of the block diagonal correlation matrix propagated by the TU-RLS. The receiver is used to decode both real and simulated data, and some of these data are severely Doppler spread.

Description: The work in this thesis was funded in part by the Norwegian Research Counsil under a general PhD contract, the education office of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Office of Naval Research under contracts N00014-95-0153 and N00014-95-l-0322.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 1997

Description: As part of the Shallow Water Acoustics in a Random Medium (SWARM) experiment [1], a sixteen element WHOI vertical line array (WVLA) was moored in 70 meters of water off the New Jersey coast. This array was sampled at 1395 Hz or higher for the seven days it was deployed. Tomography sources with carrier frequencies of 224 and 400 Hz were moored about 32 km shoreward, such that the acoustic path was anti-parallel to the primary propagation direction for shelf generated internal wave solitons. Two models for the propagation of normal modes through a 2-D waveguide with solitary internal wave (soliton) scattering included are developed to help in understanding the very complicated mode arrivals seen at the WVLA. The simplest model uses the Preisig and Duda [2] sharp interface approximation for solitons, allowing for rapid analysis of the effects of various numbers of solitons on mode arrival statistics. The second model, using SWARM thermistor string data to simulate the actual SWARM waveguides, is more realistic, but much slower. The analysis of the actual WVLA data yields spread, bias, wander, and intensity fluctuation signals that are modulated at tidal frequencies. The signals are consistent with predicted relationships to the internal wave distributions in the waveguides.

Description: The funds for my education were provided by the Office of Naval Research through an ONR Fellowship (MIT award 002734-001); the funds for SWARM were also provided by the Office of Naval Research through ONR Grant N00014-95-0051.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 1997

Description: The goals of this thesis were: (1) to establish methods for the determination of nitrogen and carbon isotope ratios in marine particulate and sedimentary chlorophyll derivatives; (2) to establish chlorophyll δ15N and δl3C as proxies for the nitrogen and carbon isotopic composition of marine phytoplankton; and (3) to use chlorophyll nitrogen isotopic ratios to understand the origin of Late Quaternary Eastern Mediterranean sapropels. Techniques are presented for the determination of chlorin nitrogen and carbon isotopic ratios in marine particles and sediments with a precision greater than 0.15 per mil for both isotopes. The procedure can be performed in about 4 hours for particulate and 8 hours for sediment samples, and relies on multiple chromatographic purifications. About 20 g of a moderately organic-rich sediment are required. A technique is also presented for the determination of chlorin nitrogen and carbon isotopic ratios by isotope-ratio monitoring gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (irmGC-MS) by synthesizing bis-(tert.-butyldimethylsiloxy)Si(IV) chlorin derivatives. However, yields for the 4-step synthesis were only about 5-6% and there was a net isotopic depletion of 1.2 (± 0.3) per mil in the derivative, relative to the starting material. These techniques are then used to show that the nitrogen isotopic difference between chlorophyll and whole cells in six species of marine phytoplankton is 5.16 ± 2.40 per mil. For carbon, the isotopic difference between chlorophyll and whole cells in five species of marine phytoplankton is -0.02 ± 2.12 per mil. A model of the distribution of 15N in phytoplankton is constructed and it is demonstrated that the interspecies variability observed for the nitrogen isotopic difference between chlorophyll and whole cells can be attributed to differences in the partitioning of cellular nitrogen between non-protein biochemicals. In the field, where mixed assemblages of phytoplankton prevail, the isotopic difference beween chlorophyll and whole cells is expected to tend toward the average value of 5.16 per mil. Finally, the average nitrogen isotopic composition of chlorins from six Late Quaternary Eastern Mediterranean sapropels (-5.01 + 0.38 per mil) was found to be very similar to the δ15N of chlorophyll from the modem deep chlorophyll maximum (-6.38 ± 1.80 per mil) in the Eastern Mediterranean. In addition, sapropel photoautotrophic material, calculated from the chlorin δ15N, had the same isotopic composition (0.15 per mil) as both bulk sapropel sediments (-0.08 ± 0.53 per mil) and deep water nitrate (-0.05 per mil). These data suggest (a) that bottom waters were anoxic, (b) that organic matter burial efficiency was enhanced, and (c) that oligotrophic conditions similar to today persisted, in the Eastern Mediterranean during sapropel deposition. These results contradict earlier interpretations of Late Quaternary bulk sedimentary δ15N in the Eastern Mediterranean. The latter concluded that the pattern of high δ15N values in intercalated marl oozes and low values in sapropels was the result of decreased nutrient utilization, and hence, increased primary production, during sapropel events. The low δ15N of deep water nitrate in the Eastern Mediterranean suggests a significant source of new nitrogen from biological N2-fixation. It is suggested that attempts to reconstruct the nitrogen isotopic composition of marine organic matter in the past by measuring the δ15N of whole sediments may be subject to misinterpretation due to the alteration of isotopic ratios during diagenesis. The partial oxidation of marine organic matter can result in significant isotopic enrichment of the preserved residual. The magnitude of this enrichment appears to be large when bottom waters are well-oxygenated, and small when bottom waters are anoxic. Environments where large temporal reqox changes have occurred are expected to be the most problematic for the interpretation of bulk sedimentary δ15N. In these environments, the diagenetic signal can be at least as large as the primary isotopic signal being sought. The Eastern Mediterranean Sea during the Late Quaternary appears to be one such environment.

Description: Funding for this work came from an Office of Naval Research Graduate Fellowship, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Ventures Fund, and a Petroleum Research Grant(# 30124-AC2).

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 1996

Description: This thesis details two years of research conducted with the guidance and support of three advisors: Dr. J. K. Whelan, Dr. J. S. Seewald and Dr. T. I. Eglinton. Each of the three chapters represents a different, self-contained research project. All of the projects are related to the organic geochemistry of marine sediments, however, this is a fairly encompassing area of study. Chapters 1 and 2 stem from the same experimental study -the use of hydrous-pyrolysis to investigate mechanisms leading to the production of petroleum-related products during kerogen maturation. Chapter 3, on the other hand, utilizes a recently developed technique of isolating and AMS-14C dating individual compounds from complex sedimentary organic mixtures. The samples used in each investigation came from all over the world. The first two chapters utilize ancient marine sediment samples obtained from an outcrop in California (Chpts. 1 and 2) and from a well in Alabama (Chpt. 2). In contrast, recent marine sediment samples were obtained from the Arabian and Black Seas for the third chapter. Several preparative and analytical methods are common to all three studies. Nevertheless, each employ techniques totally unique from one another and from previous investigations. In Chapter 1, for example, X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XANES) is used to determine the speciation of organic sulfur present in kerogen, bitumen, and bulk sediment samples. While Chapter 3 represents the first study in which the 14C ages of individual, known hydrocarbon biomarkers are determined after isolation by Preparative Capillary Gas Chromatography (PCGC). The insights gained by these investigations are discussed in detail in the following chapters. The common thread between the three chapters is that the source of organic matter, the rate at which it is delivered to marine sediments and the depositional environment, all set the stage for kerogen formation and eventual petroleum generation.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2012

Description: Adaptive equalization is an important aspect of communication systems in various environments. It is particularly important in underwater acoustic communication systems, as the channel has a long delay spread and is subject to the effects of time- varying multipath fading and Doppler spreading. The design of the adaptation algorithm has a profound influence on the performance of the system. In this thesis, we explore this aspect of the system. The emphasis of the work presented is on applying concepts from inference and decision theory and information theory to provide an approach to deriving and analyzing adaptation algorithms. Limited work has been done so far on rigorously devising adaptation algorithms to suit a particular situation, and the aim of this thesis is to concretize such efforts and possibly to provide a mathematical basis for expanding it to other applications. We derive an algorithm for the adaptation of the coefficients of an equalizer when the receiver has limited or no information about the transmitted symbols, which we term the Soft-Decision Directed Recursive Least Squares algorithm. We will demonstrate connections between the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm and the Recursive Least Squares algorithm, and show how to derive a computationally efficient, purely recursive algorithm from the optimal EM algorithm. Then, we use our understanding of Markov processes to analyze the performance of the RLS algorithm in hard-decision directed mode, as well as of the Soft-Decision Directed RLS algorithm. We demonstrate scenarios in which the adaptation procedures fail catastrophically, and discuss why this happens. The lessons from the analysis guide us on the choice of models for the adaptation procedure. We then demonstrate how to use the algorithm derived in a practical system for underwater communication using turbo equalization. As the algorithm naturally incorporates soft information into the adaptation process, it becomes easy to fit it into a turbo equalization framework. We thus provide an instance of how to use the information of a turbo equalizer in an adaptation procedure, which has not been very well explored in the past. Experimental data is used to prove the value of the algorithm in a practical context.

Description: Support from the agencies that funded this research- the Academic Programs Office at WHOI and the Office of Naval Research (through ONR Grant #N00014-07-10738 and #N00014-10-10259).

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 1998

Description: Work on the forward problem in zooplankton bioacoustics has resulted in the identification of three categories of acoustic scatterers: elastic-shelled (e.g. pteropods), fluid-like (e.g. euphausiids), and gas-bearing (e.g. siphonophores). The relationship between backscattered energy and animal biomass has been shown to vary by a factor of —19,000 across these categories, so that to make accurate estimates of zooplankton biomass from acoustic backscatter measurements of the ocean, the acoustic characteristics of the species of interest must be well-understood. This thesis describes the development of both feature based and model based classification techniques to invert broadband acoustic echoes from individual zooplankton for scatterer type, as well as for particular parameters such as animal orientation. The feature based Empirical Orthogonal Function Classifier (EOFC) discriminates scatterer types by identifying characteristic modes of variability in the echo spectra, exploiting only the inherent characteristic structure of the acoustic signatures. The model based Model Parameterisation Classifier (MPC) classifies based on correlation of observed echo spectra with simplified parameterisations of theoretical scattering models for the three classes. The Covariance Mean Variance Classifiers (CMVC) are a set of advanced model based techniques which exploit the full complexity of the theoretical models by searching the entire physical model parameter space without employing simplifying parameterisations. Three different CMVC algorithms were developed: the Integrated Score Classifier (ISC), the Pairwise Score Classifier (PSC) and the Bayesian Probability Classifier (BPC); these classifiers assign observations to a class based on similarities in covariance, mean, and variance, while accounting for model ambiguity and validity. These feature based and model based inversion techniques were successfully applied to several thousand echoes acquired from broadband (-350 kHz - 750 kHz) insonifications of live zooplankton collected on Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine to determine scatterer class. CMVC techniques were also applied to echoes from fluid-like zooplankton (Antarctic krill) to invert for angle of orientation using generic and animal-specific theoretical and empirical models. Application of these inversion techniques in situ will allow correct apportionment of backscattered energy to animal biomass, significantly improving estimates of zooplankton biomass based on acoustic surveys.

Description: Thanks to the WHOI/MIT Joint Program Education Office for partial funding. Other sources of funding for my thesis work include the Ocean Acoustics, Oceanic Biology and URIP programs of the Office of Naval Research grant numbers N00014-89- J-1729, N00014-95-1-0287 and N00014-924-1527, and the Biological Oceanography program of the National Science Foundation grant number OCE-9201264.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1990

Description: Travel-times of acoustic signals were measured between a bottom-mounted source near Oahu and four bottom-mounted receivers located near Washington, Oregon, and California in 1988 and 1989. This paper discusses the observed tidal signals. At three out of four receivers, observed travel times at M2 and S2 periods agree with predictions from barotropic tide models to within ±30° in phase and a factor of 1.6 in amplitude. The discrepancy at the fourth receiver can be removed by including predicted effects of phase-locked baroclinic tides generated by seamounts. Our estimates of barotropic M2 tidal dissipation by seamounts vary between 2 x 1016 and 1 X 1018 erg·s-1. The variation by two orders of magnitude is due to uncertainties in the numbers and sizes of seamounts. The larger dissipation (1 x 1018 erg·s-1) is the same order as previous estimates and amounts to 4% of the total dissipation at M2.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ocean Engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution January 1994

Description: In 1991 the Heard Island Feasibility Test demonstrated that it is possible to transmit coded acoustic signals nearly half way around the world. One of the key issues in the feasibility test was to determine the spatial structure of the received transmissions. In this thesis, data from the Canadian Defense Research Establishment Pacific horizontal line array is used to form an estimate of the directional power spectrum. This spectrum determines if any horizontal multipath is detectable. The preliminary signal conditioning, including frequency spectrum estimation and demodulation required before beamforming is described. Conventional and adaptive beamforming methods are examined with synthetic data to demonstrate the limitations on the directional spectrum results. The principle result of this work is that no stable horizontal multipath is evident. The mean arrival angle for the five hours of data analyzed is 212° ± 1.5°.

Description: The Office of Naval Research provided funding for the author under the ONR fellowship program.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 1989

Description: The problem of a low-frequency acoustic plane wave incident upon a free surface coupled to a semi-infinite elastic plate surface, is solved using an analytic approach based on the Wiener-Hopf method. By low-frequency it is meant that the elastic properties of the plate are adequately described by the thin plate equation (kH ≲ 1). The diffraction problem relates to issues in long range sound propagation through partially ice-covered Arctic waters, where open leads or polynya on the surface represent features from which acoustic energy can be diffracted or scattered. This work focusses on ice as the material for the elastic plate surface, and, though the solution methods presented here have applicability to general edge diffraction problems, the results and conclusions are directed toward the ice lead diffraction process. The work begins with the derivation of an exact solution to a canonical problem: a plane wave incident upon a free surface (Dirichlet boundary condition) coupled to a perfectly rigid surface (Neumann boundary condition). Important features of the general edge diffraction problem are included here, with the solution serving as a guideline to the more complicated solutions presented later involving material properties of the boundary. The ice material properties are first addressed using the locally reacting approximation for the input impedance of an ice plate, wherein the effects of elasticity are ignored. This is followed by use of the thin plate equation to describe the input impedance, which incorporates elements of elastic wave propagation. An important issue in working with the thin plate equation is the fluid loading pertaining to sea ice and low-frequency acoustics, which cannot be characterized by simplifying heavy or light fluid loading limits. An approximation to the exact kernel of the Wiener-Hopf functional equation is used here, which is valid in this mid-range fluid loading regime. Use of this approximate kernel allows one to proceed to a complete and readily interpretable solution for the far field diffracted pressure, which includes a subsonic flexural wave in the ice plate. By using Green's theorem, in conjunction with the behavior of the diffracted field along the two-part planar boundary, the functional dependence of ∏D (total diffracted power) in terms of k (wavenumber), H (ice thickness), α (grazing angle) and the combined elastic properties of the ice sheet and ambient medium, is determined. A means to convert ∏D into an estimate of dB loss per bounce is developed using ray theoretical methods, in order to demonstrate a mechanism for acoustic propagation loss attributed directly to ice lead diffraction effects. Data from the 1984 MIZEX (Marginal Ice Zone Experiments) narrow-band acoustic transmission experiments are presented and discussed in this context.

Description: I also gratefully acknowledge financial support provided by the WHOI Education Office and the Office of Naval Research.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1989

Description: Variability of the Florida Current has been monitored via acoustic tomography. A reciprocal tomography experiment was conducted in the eastern half of the Florida Straits during mid October and November, 1983. A triangular array of transceivers, with leg separations of approximately 45 kilometers, was deployed at 27°N. The presence of a surface mixed layer in the region allowed for the ducted propagation of acoustic energy in the surface layer. A deeper layer was sampled by an unresolved group of refracted, bottom reflected ray arrivals. Incorporating the complete set of arrivals, we are able to obtain depth dependent estimates of the temperature field, current velocity, and relative vorticity. The oceanography of the region has been shown to be dominated by the lateral shifting of the surface and subsurface core of the Florida Current. The influx of westward flowing water through the Northwest Providence Channel at 26°N also appears as a large scale signal in the eastern Florida Straits. Low frequency fluctuations of temperature, current velocity, and vorticity occur at periods ranging from several days to nearly two weeks, and are intimately related to meandering of the Florida Current system.

Description: This research was carried out under ONR contract N00014-86-K-0751.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ocean Engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1990

Description: The propagation of low frequency seismo-acoustic waves in the Arctic Ocean ice canopy is examined through the analysis of hydrophone and geophone data sets collected in 1987 at an ice camp designated PRUDEX in the Beaufort Sea. Study of the geophone time series generated by under-ice explosive detonations reveals not only the expected longitudinal and flexural waves in the ice plate, but also an unexpected horizontally-polarized transverse (SH) wave arriving at a higher amplitude than the other wave types. The travel paths of all three observed wave types are found to be refracted in the horizontal plane along a line coincident with a known ridge separating the ice canopy locally into two distinct half-plates, the first of thin first year ice and the second of thicker multi-year ice. The origin of the SH wave appears to be near the detonation and not associated with the interaction of longitudinal, flexural or waterborne waves with the ridge line. The need to determine the exact location of each detonation from the received time series highlights the dramatic superiority of geophones over hydrophones in this application, as does the ability to detect the anomalous SH waves and the refracted ray paths, neither of which are visible in the hydrophone data. Inversion of the geophone data sets for the low frequency elastic parameters of the ice is conducted initially by treating the ice as a single homogeneous isotropic plate to demonstrate the power of SAFARI numerical modeling in this application. A modified stationary phase approach is then used to extend SAFARI modeling to invert the data sets for the elastic parameters of the two ice half-plates simultaneously. The compressional/shear bulk wave speeds estimated in the half-plates, 3500/1750 m/s in the multi-year ice and 3000/1590 m/ s in the new ice, are comparable to previously obtained values; however, the compressional/shear attenuation values in the two half-plates, 1.0/2.99 d/Bλ. and 1.0/2.67 dB/λ, respectively, are somewhat greater than previously measured values and four times greater than estimates extrapolated from high frequency data.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ocean Engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1990

Description: Pulse-like acoustic signals are transmitted from an acoustic source near Oahu to seven receivers off the west coast of the United States for a 124-day period in 1988. Acoustic travel-time oscillations are observed in the received signal at periods between 15 and 23 hours, which are caused by barotropic (or first or second mode baroclinic) flu ctuations in the ocean. It is shown that these fluctuations cannot be local processes isolated to either the source or to the receivers. It is further shown that resonant barotropic gravity wave modes (Platzman et al., 1981) are not consistent with the data. The cause of these flu ctuations remains unresolved, but the data and other oceanographic measurements put many constraints on the process causing these fluctuations.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 1996

Description: The shallow water acoustic channel supports far-field propagation in a discrete set of modes. Ocean experiments have confirmed the modal nature of acoustic propagation, but no experiment has successfully excited only one of the suite of mid-frequency propagating modes propagating in a coastal environment. The ability to excite a single mode would be a powerful tool for investigating shallow water ocean processes. A feedback control algorithm incorporating elements of adaptive estimation, underwater acoustics, array processing and control theory to generate a high-fidelity single mode is presented. This approach also yields a cohesive framework for evaluating the feasibility of generating a single mode with given array geometries, noise characteristics and source power limitations. Simulations and laboratory waveguide experiments indicate the proposed algorithm holds promise for ocean experiments.

Description: Josko Catipovic funded my research for summer of 1992 on the Office of Naval Research Grant Number N00014-92-J-1661 and from June 1993 through August 1995 on Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grant Number MDA972-92-J- 1041. The Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-95-1-0362 to MIT supported the computer facilities used to do much of this work.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution January 1993

Description: Although the association between soft-sediment invertebrates and a specific sediment type has been documented for many habitats, most studies have been correlative and have failed to convincingly demonstrate any single mechanism to explain this association. Sediment type has generally been characterized by grain size, however, many other potential causal factors correlate with grain size, including organic content, microbial content, stability, food supply, and larval supply. One hypothesis for animal-sediment associations is that settling larvae are transported as passive particles and are sorted into different sedimentary habitats much like sediment grains. To test the hypothesis that near-bed hydrodynamics may modify larval settlement, field and flume experiments were conducted where larval settlement was compared between microdepositional environments (small depressions) and non-trapping environments (flush treatments). Depressions have been observed to trap passive particles, and these experiments were therefore designed to test whether settling larvae would be trapped in depressions like passive particles. Flume flow simulations were carried out with the polychaete Capitella sp. I and the bivalve Mulinia latera/is. Experiments with flush and depression sediment treatments were conducted in the absence of the potentially confounding effects of suspended sediment and organic matter and therefore offered a highly controlled, explicit test of passive hydrodynamic deposition of larvae in depressions. Although larvae of both species were generally able to actively select a high-organic sediment over a low-organic alternative with a comparable grain size, elevated densities of both species were observed in depressions for a given sediment treatment. Thus, both species appeared to be vulnerable to hydrodynamic trapping. M. latera/is larvae, however, often made a "poor choice" by settling in high numbers in depressions containing the low-organic sediment while Capitella sp. I larvae were generally able to "escape" from depressions if the sediment was unsuitable. In field experiments carried out at Station R in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, significantly higher densities of Mediomastus ambiseta juveniles, spionid polychaete juveniles, bivalves, gastropod larvae, and nemerteans were observed in depressions compared with flush treatments over 5 relatively short experimental periods (3 or 4 days each) during the summer of 1990. Of the abundant taxa, only Capitella spp. was not significantly more abundant in depressions compared with flush treatments, although numbers tended to be higher in depressions. Experiments were conducted over a short time period to minimize potential biological interactions between taxa and reduce the likelihood that organic material would accumulate in depressions and provide a cue for settling larvae. Thus, higher numbers in depressions suggest that larvae were passively entrained. These flume and field experiments suggest that near-bed hydrodynamics may modify settlement at some scales, and that both active and passive processes may operate in determining larval distributions in shallow-water, muddy habitats. In deep-sea ecosystems, the role of near-bed hydrodynamics is also of interest because of the potential role that larval settlement in organic patches may play in maintaining the immense species diversity characteristic of many deep-sea ecosystems. To try to understand the role of organic patches in deep-sea communities, several investigators have used colonization trays containing sediments that have been treated in different ways. These experiments have been criticized in the past because the sediment surface in the trays was elevated above the bottom and may therefore have interfered with natural boundary layer flow. Flume simulations of flow over these colonization trays revealed serious flow artifacts generated by the trays, and that flow across the sediment surface of the trays was characterized by turbulent eddies, accelerated velocities and boundary layer thickening. These sorts of flow characteristics would not be expected over natural sediments, and an alternative colonization tray was designed to eliminate these artifacts. To test the hypothesis that different types of food patches would result in different types of larval response, and determine how near-bed hydrodynamics may influence larval settlement, flush colonization trays filled with prefrozen sediment were deployed in tandem with artificial depressions south of St. Croix, U.S.V.I at 900 m depth. Colonization trays and artificial depressions were either unenriched or enriched with Thalassiosira sp. and Sargassum sp. two types of algae chosen to mimic natural food patches on the sea floor. Unexpectedly high densities of organisms colonized trays after only 23 days. The Thalassiosira trays were colonized by high densities of a relatively low diversity, opportunistic fauna, Sargassum trays were colonized by lower densities of a higher diversity fauna, and unenriched trays were colonized by very low numbers of a very diverse fauna. All tray faunas were markedly different in composition from the natural, ambient fauna. These fmdings suggest that different patch types did, indeed, result in a specialized faunal response to each of the "patch" types. Depressions on the sea floor provide a natural mechanism for food patch formation because passive particles such as detritus and algae tend to be entrained in the depressions. To determine whether dominant colonizers would be entrained in depressions like passive particles or could differentiate between depression "patch" types in a flow environment that might be expected to make active selection more difficult, artificial depressions were unenriched or enriched with Sargassum sp. or Thalassiosira sp. Total densities of organisms and densities of the most abundant species were substantially lower in artificial depressions than in trays. Densities in Thalassiosira depressions were lower than in Sargassum depressions and densities in unenriched depressions were extremely low, suggesting that dominant colonizers were not passively entrained in depressions and that colonization was specialized and highly active for these taxa. A different fauna was also observed in natural depressions compared with flush sediments, suggesting that natural depressions do contribute to species coexistence. Long-term tray deployments designed to test whether different faunas would be present in "patches" of different ages indicated that time may also play an important part in a deep-sea patch mosaic.

Description: This was funded by NSF and ONR, NOAA, NSERC (Canada), WHOI Ocean Ventures Fund and the WHOI Ditty Bag Fund.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 1998

Description: The goal of this thesis is to develop a methodology to interpret sound scattered from the seafloor in terms of seafloor structure and subseafloor geological properties. Specifically, this work has been directed towards the interpretation of matched-filtered, beamformed monostatic acoustic reverberation data acquired on the west flank of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge when the seafloor is insonified by a band-limited, low-grazing-angle acoustic pulse. This research is based on the hypothesis that observed backscatter signals are produced by a combination of seafloor (interface) scattering and subseafloor (volume) scattering from structure having variations at scale lengths similar to the wavelength of the insonifying acoustic field. Analysis of monostatic reverberation data acquired during the Site A experiment (Run 1) of the Acoustic Reverberation Special Research Program 1993 Acoustics Cruise suggests that the scattered signals cannot be accounted for quantitatively in terms of large-scale slope, even though a strong correspondence between high intensity backscatter and seafloor ridges is observed. In order to investigate and quantify the actual sources of seafloor scattering, a numerical modeling study of seafloor models is undertaken using a finite-difference solution to the elastic wave equation. Geological data available at Site A and published reports describing geological properties of similar deep ocean crustal regions are used to develop a realistic seafloor model for the study area with realistic constraints on elastic parameters. Wavelength-scale heterogeneity in each model, in the form of seafloor roughness and subseafloor volume heterogeneity is defined using stochastic distributions with Gaussian autocorrelations. These distributions are quantified by their correlation lengths and standard deviation in amplitude. In order to incorporate all seafloor structure in a single parameterization of seafloor scattering, large-scale slope and wavelength-scale seafloor spatial parameters (rms height and correlation length), are included, along with the acoustic beam grazing-angle relative to a horizontal seafloor, in the definition of an 'effective grazing angle'. The Rayleigh roughness parameter, which depends on grazing angle of the insonification, is then redefined using the effective grazing angle and calculated for a variety of seafloor models. Scattering strengths are shown to vary systematically but nonlinearly with the 'effective Rayleigh roughness parameters' of horizontal rough seafloor models. This leads to an approximate interpretation scheme for backscatter intensity. In general, variation in backscattering is found to be dominated by the scattering from rough seafloor. If the seafloor is smooth or very low velocity (e.g., sediment), then scattering from volume heterogeneity becomes an important factor in the backscattered field. Both wavelength-scale seafloor roughness and volume heterogeneity are shown to be capable of producing the levels of variation in intensity observed in monostatic reverberation experiments. Variations in large-scale seafloor slope and subseafloor average velocity are shown to influence the backscatter response of seafloor models.

Description: My first year of study at MIT was supported by a Chevron Fellowship. The work in this thesis was funded by the Office of Naval Research under grant numbers N00014-93-1-1352, N00014-90-J-1493, and N00014-95-1-0506.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ocean Engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 1995

Description: The data analysis of a deep-sea bottom backscattering experiment, carried out over a sediment pond on the western flank of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in July 1993 with a 250- 650 Hz chirp source and a vertical receiving array suspended near the fiat seafloor, is presented in this thesis. Reflected signals in the normal incidence direction as the output of endfire beamforming are used to determine the sediment structure. The sediment is found to be horizontally stratified, except for two irregular regions, each about 20 m t hick, located around 18 m and 60 m beneath the water-sediment interface. Multiple constraints beamforming is shown to be effective in removing coherent reflections from internal stratified layers, which is critical to the analysis of bottom backscattering. With backscattered signals obtained by beamforming, the above-mentioned two inhomogeneous regions are found to be the dominant factors on the bottom backscattered field, both in the normal incidence and oblique directions. The backscattering strength as a function of grazing angle is estimated for each of the two regions.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution March 1990

Description: This thesis introduces a new procedure for the enhancement of acoustic images of the bottom of the sea produced by side-scan sonars. Specifically, it addresses the problem of estimating and correcting geometric distortions frequently observed in such images as a consequence of motion instabilities of the sonar array. This procedure estimates the geometric distortions from the image itself, without requiring any navigational or attitude measurements. A mathematical model for the distortions is derived from the geometry of the problem, and is applied to estimates of the local degree of geometric distortion obtained by cross-correlating segments of adjacent lines of the image. The model parameters are then recursively estimated through deterministic least-squares estimation. An alternative approach based on adaptive Kalman filtering is also proposed, providing a natural framework in which a priori information about the array dynamics may be easily incorporated. The estimates of the parameters of the distortion model are used to rectify the image, and may also be used for estimating the attitude parameters of the array. A simulation is employed to evaluate the effectiveness of this technique and examples of its application to high-resolution side-scan sonar images are provided.

Description: This work was produced under sponsorship of the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient{jico e Tecnol6gico (CNPq), an agency of the Government of the Federative Republic of Brazil, and was supported in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency monitored by the Office of Naval Research under Grant No. N00014-89-J-1489, in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. MIP 87-14969, and in part by Sanders Associates, Incorporated.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ocean Engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1991

Description: A model is developed for the prediction of the seismo-acoustic noise spectrum in the microseism peak region (0.1 to 0.7 Hz). The model uses a theory developed by Cato [J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 89 , 1096-1112 (1991)] for an infinite depth ocean in which the surface orbital motion caused by gravity waves may produce acoustic waves at twice the gravity wave frequency. Using directional wave spectra as inputs, acoustic source levels are computed and incorporated into a more realistic environment consisting of a horizontally stratified ocean with an elastic bottom. Noise predictions are made using directional wave spectra obtained from the SWADE surface buoys moored off the coast of Virginia and the SAFARI sound propagation code, with a bottom model derived using wave speeds measured in the EDGE deep seismic reflection survey. The predictions are analyzed for noise level variations with frequency, wave height, wind direction, and receiver depth. These predictions are compared to noise measurements made in ECONOMEX using near-bottom receivers located close to the surface buoys. Good agreement is found between the predictions and observations under a variety of environmental conditions.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1992

Description: An ultra-short baseline acoustic navigation system has been developed which is capable of determining bearing to a sound source with an error of less than 1° in typical operational conditions. The system has a demonstrated ability to operate in an environment in which multipath interference is significant. A DSP microprocessor is used to process signals received by two hydrophones from a 26 kHz toneburst sound source. This processing power is used to implement features not commonly available with commercial systems. The system has the capability to make an on-line measurement of the signal-tonoise ratio, which can be used to estimate the confidence which should be placed in the data. Estimates of phase difference and signal power are generated many times within each received pulse, so the effects of multi path interference throughout the pulse can be observed. Results of tests at several ranges are presented, and compared to performance models developed in the thesis. System performance is quantified, and an effort is made to understand the effects of multipath arrivals.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1993

Description: In a shallow water ocean environment, the range-dependent variation of the geoacoustic properties of the seabed is one of the crucial factors affecting sound propagation. Since the local modes of propagation depend on the spatial changes in the bottom sediments, the local eigenvalues of these modes are useful as tools for examining the range dependence of the sediment properties. In order to extract the local eigenvalues from measurements of the pressure field in a laterally inhomogeneous waveguide, the zero-order asymptotic Hankel transform with a short sliding window is utilized. The local peak positions in the output spectra differ from the local eigenvalues due to both the range variation of the local modes and the interference of adjacent modes. The departure due to the former factor is evaluated analytically by using the stationary phase method. In order to reduce the error induced by the latter factor, mode filtering is utilized by incorporating data from a fixed vertical array of receivers. The use of the above zero-order Hankel transform in a three-dimensionally varying waveguide results in an underestimate of the local eigenvalues due to the effect of horizontal refraction. Thus a general asymptotic Hankel transform with a 2-D sliding window is used to correct for the underestimated amount. By expanding the latter transform with respect to the azimuthal angle, it can also be shown that the first term in the Taylor series corresponds to the former transform; the rest of the terms account for the value difference between the underestimated and actual local eigenvalues. In order to obtain the spatial variation of the sediment properties from the rangedependent variation of the extracted local eigenvalues, the analytical relationship between these two variations is derived by using a perturbation method in a horizontally varying, multi-layered bottom model. Upon use of the n2-linear profile in each layer, the relationship can be obtained in closed form. As a result, the range variation of the local eigenvalues may be separated into terms that depend on each geoacoustic parameter. Based on this relation, an inversion method for determining the range-dependent geoacoustic parameters is developed. The methods developed in this thesis are applied to simulated pressure field data as well as experimental field data. It is shown that the evolution with range of the local modes as well as the range-dependent geoacoustic properties can be successfully estimated.

Description: Financial support for my research was provided by the WHOI Education Department and the Office of Naval Research.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 1993

Description: The goal of this thesis was to develop and apply an integrated chemical and microbial approach to study the effects of chemical structure on the rates and patterns of carbohydrate degradation by anaerobic marine bacteria. Polysaccharides produced by five species of marine plankton, Dunaliella tertiolecta, Emiliania huxleyi, Stephanopixis palmeri, a Phaeocystis sp., and Synechococcus WH7335, were surveyed using one- and two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). Two carbohydrates from Synechococcus WH7335 were characterized in detail. Synechococcus produced an α(1,4) glucose polysaccharide with α(1,6) branches, which probably functions as an energy reserve. The nominal molecular weight of the polysaccharide was ~5000 daltons. Large quantities of a glycerolpolysaccharide, which was tentatively identified as a teichoic acid similar in structure to teichoic acids found in cell walls of gram-positive bacteria, were also produced by Synechococcus WH7335. This is the first report of teichoic acids in cyanobacteria. Enrichment of bacteria from anoxic marine sediments on specific carbohydrates yielded reproducible model systems with which to study the degradation of chemically well-defined substrates. Headspace gases (C02, H2, CH4, H2S) were monitored by gas chromatography, and carbohydrate substrates and intermediates were separated and quantified via gel-permeation chromatography and high-pressure liquid chromatography. The transfer of carbon from substrates through to end products was followed quantitatively. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to check for selective structural alterations (such as preferential cleavage of specific linkage types or positions) of the substrates. A series of enrichment experiments showed that mixed cultures of marine bacteria distinguish even between small, very closely-related substrates which do not require extracellular hydrolysis prior to uptake. A galactose-β(1,3)-arabinose dimer was degraded at half the rate of seven other similar disaccharides and three larger oligosaccharides. A further series of degradation experiments with polysaccharides (pullulan, laminarin) showed that they are degraded by bacteria at virtually the same rate as structurally related substrates in the molecular weight range of 300-600 daltons. Degradation of the branched glucan and the teichoic acid-type polysaccharide from Synechococcus WH7335 was also very rapid. The time-course of bacterial hydrolysis of pullulan was examined with gel permeation chromatography and NMR to provide the first molecular-level evidence in marine systems of the bacterial extracellular transformation of high molecular weight organic matter to lower molecular weight organic matter. NMR spectra provided evidence that the pullulan was hydrolyzed by pullulanase, an endo-acting extracellular enzyme which preferentially hydrolyzes α(1,6) linkages. This is the first experimental evidence of pullulanase activity among marine mesophilic bacteria. The culture results suggest that enzymatic hydrolysis of macromolecular carbohydrates to transportable pieces is not the slow step in bacterial degradation of at least some types of polysaccharides. The results from the oligosaccharide experiments suggest that certain heteropolysaccharides may not be degraded as quickly. Chemical structure can be more important than molecular weight in determining degradation rates of carbohydrates. Varying rates of organic polymer degradation in anoxic sediments may be largely determined by the sensitivity of bacterial enzymatic and transport systems to structural features.

Description: Funding for this work was provided by a graduate fellowship from the Office of Naval Research, and grants from the WHOI Ocean Ventures Fund and the Department of Energy's Ocean Margins Program (DE-FG02-92ER61428).

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1993

Description: This thesis examines the use of a single, omnidirectional hydrophone as a receiving sensor to passively localize an acoustic beacon. The localization problem is presented as a constrained, nonlinear parameter estimation problem, and Lagrange multipliers are introduced to solve for the maximum likelihood estimate of the acoustic beacon's position. An iterative algorithm is developed using range difference measurements to solve for the maximum likelihood estimate of a stationary acoustic beacon's position. This algorithm is then _extended to include linear, constant velocity motion of the acoustic beacon. Finally, design specifications for a receiver to implement the maximum likelihood estimation algorithms are developed. To test the maximum likelihood estimate algorithms, Monte Carlo simulations are conducted. Results from six representative scenarios are presented. Test results show that as the number of range differences used increases, or the distance that the observer travels between received beacon signals increases, the accuracy of the estimated position improves. Also, tests show that accuracy of the estimated beacon position is directly related to the accuracy in which the observer's position is measured. To test the receiver's design specifications, a prototype receiver is built using commonly available components. It is then shown that the prototype receiver meets or exceeds the design specifications.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 1994

Description: This thesis presents the design and simulation of an acoustic listen-only navigation system for use in a time-varying high-multipath environment. The system uses a ray tracing model of sound propagation in a horizontally stratified ocean to associate each multipath arrival with a particular ray path through the ocean. This ray path identification allows an inversion for both vehicle position and sound speed profile parameters. Tracking changes in the sound speed profile allows the vehicle to maintain navigation accuracy in a time-varying acoustic environment. Simulation results for typical Arctic conditions indicate the potential for accurate navigation from acoustic beacons at ranges up to tens of kilometers.

Description: I also wish to acknowledge the support received from a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship under Grant #RCD-9154652 and from the Office of Naval Research Arctic Programs Office, which made possible this work.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 1994

Description: Ambient noise in the sea has been observed for over 100 years. Previous studies conclude that the primary source of microseisms is nonlinear interaction of surface gravity waves at the sea surface. Though this source relationship is generally accepted, the actual processes by which the wave generated acoustic noise in the water column couples and propagates to and along the sea floor are not well understood. In this thesis, the sources and propagation of sea floor and sub-sea floor microseismic noise between 0.2 and 10 Hz are investigated. This thesis involves a combination of theoretical, observational and numerical analysis to probe the nature of the microseismic field in the Blake Bahama Basin. Surface waves are the primary mechanism for noise propagation in the crust and fall into two separate groups depending on the relative wavelength/water depth ratio. Asymptotic analysis of the Sommerfeld integral in the complex ray parameter plane shows results that agree with previous findings by Strick (1959) and reveal two fundamental interface wave modes for short wavelength noise propagation in the crust: the Stoneley and pseudo-Rayleigh wave. For ocean sediments, where the shear wave velocity is less than the acoustic wave velocity of water, only the Stoneley interface wave can exist. For well consolidated sediments and basalt, the shear velocity exceeds the acoustic wave velocity of water and the pseudo-Rayleigh wave can also exist. Both interface waves propagate with retrograde elliptic motion at the sea floor and attenuate with depth into the crust, however the pseudo-Rayleigh wave travels along the interface with dispersion and attenuation and "leaks" energy into the water column for a half-space ocean over elastic crust model. For finite depth ocean models, the pseudo-Rayleigh wave is no longer leaky and approaches the Rayleigh wave velocity of the crust. The analysis shows that longer wavelength noise propagates as Rayleigh and Stoneley modes of the ocean+crust waveguide. These long wavelength modes are the fundamental mechanism for long range noise propagation. During the Low Frequency Acoustic Seismic Experiment (LFASE) a four-node, 12- channel borehole array (SEABASS) was deployed in the Blake Bahama Basin off the coast of eastern Florida (DSDP Hole 534B). This experiment is unique and is the first use of a borehole array to measure microseismic noise below the sea floor. Ambient background noise from a one week period is compared between an Ocean Bottom Seismometer (OBS) and SEABASS at sub-bottom depths of 10, 40, 70 and 100 meters below the sea floor. The 0.3 H z microseism peak is found to be nearly invariant with depth and has a power level of 65 and 75 dB rel 1 (nm/ s2)2)/ H z for the vertical and horizontal components respectively. At 100 m depth, the mean microseismic noise levels above 0.7 Hz are 10 dB and 15-20 dB quieter for the vertical and horizontal components respectively. Most of this attenuation occurs in the upper 10 m above 1.0 Hz, however higher modes in the spectra show narrow bandwidth variability in the noise field that is not monotonic with depth. Dispersion calculations show normal mode Stoneley waves below 0.7 Hz and evidence of higher modes above 0.8 Hz. A strong correlation between noise levels in the borehole and local sea state conditions is observed along with clear observation of the nonlinear frequency doubling effect between ocean surface waves and microseisms. Particle motion analysis further verifies that noise propagates through the array as Rayleigh/Stoneley waves. Polarization direction indicates at least two sources; distant westerly swell during quiescent times and local surface waves due to a passing storm. Above 1.0 Hz the LFASE data shows little coherence and displays random polarization. Because of this, we believe scattered energy is a significant component of the noise field in the Blake Bahama Basin. A fully 3-D finite difference algorithm is used to model both surface and volume heterogeneities in the ocean crust. Numerical modeling of wave propagation for hard and soft bottom environments shows that heterogeneities on the order of a seismic wavelength radiate energy into the water column and convert acoustic waves in the water into small wavelength Stoneley waves observed at the borehole. Sea floor roughness is the most important elastic scattering feature of the ocean crust. Comparisons of 2D and 3D rough sea floor models show that out-of-plane effects necessitate the use of 3D methods. The out-of-plane energy that is present in the LFASE data comes from either heterogeneities in the source field (i.e. mixed gravity wave directions) or, equally likely, scattering of the source field from surface or volume heterogeneities in the sea floor.

Description: This research was supported by Office of Naval Research grants N00014-89-C-0018, N00014-89-J-1012, N00014-90-C-0098, N00014-90-J-1493 and N00014-93-1-1352.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2012

Description: Signal detection and synchronization in the time varying ocean environment is a difficult endeavor. The current common methods include using a linear frequency modulated chirped pulse or maximal length sequence as a detection pulse, then match filtering to that signal. In higher signal to noise ratio (SNR) environments (~0 dB and higher) this has been a suitable solution. As the SNR drops lower however, this solution no longer provides an acceptable probability of detection for a given tolerable probability of false alarm. The issue derives from the inherent coherence issues in the ocean environment which limit the useful matched filter length. This thesis proposes an alternative method of detection based on a recursive least squares linearly adaptive equalizer which we term the Adaptive Linear Equalizer Detector (ALED). This detectors performance has demonstrated reliable probability of detection with minimal interfering false alarms with SNR as low as -20 dB. Additionally this thesis puts forth a computationally feasible method for implementing the detector.

Description: Support from the Office of Naval Research (through ONR grant #N00014-07-10738 and #N00014-11-10426).

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ocean Engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1990

Description: This paper develops a beam pattern design procedure for general multidimensional irregular sonar arrays that incorporates the not well understood effects of array geometry into the design process. The procedure is implemented by generating a "penalty function" in a spectral covariance function form. Processing the penalty function causes beam pattern high sidelobes to be penalized and the main lobe to be emphasized. This is accomplished by forming the penalty function in terms of an isotropic noise field of specified strength modified with a finite sector of low coherent energy and stabilized with incoherent sensor noise. By inputting the penalty function into a minimum variance beamformer, the beam pattern and aperture weights are calculated based on the given array geometry. The beamformer used is Capon's Maximum Likelihood Method. The array used to test the procedure is located on a sixty degree sector of a cylindrical surface. The procedure is implemented by two different methods, each with some desirable characteristics. One method suppresses sidelobes directly by the placement of nulls. The other method suppresses sidelobes indirectly by the enhancement of the main lobe with anti-nulls. Both methods are evaluated in terms of a sensitivity factor which constrains the maximum white noise array gain. Results show that both methods result in sidelobe levels that range from 20 to 35 dB lower compared to a conventional beam pattern with uniform aperture weighting and that the design procedure is applicable to beam patterns steered to both true broadside and to off-broadside directions.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 1999

Description: During July and August of 1996, a large acoustics/physical oceanography experiment was fielded in the Mid-Atlantic Bight, south of Nantucket Island, MA. Known as the Shelfbreak Front PRIMER Experiment, the study combined acoustic data from a moored array of sources and receivers with very high resolution physical oceanographic measurements. This thesis addresses two of the primary goals of the experiment, explaining the properties of acoustic propagation in the region, and tomographic inversion of the acoustic data. In addition, this thesis develops a new method for predicting acoustic coherence in such regions. Receptions from two 400 Hz tomography sources, transmitting from the continental slope onto the shelf, are analyzed. This data, along with forward propagation modeling utilizing SeaSoar thermohaline measurements, reveal that both the shelfbreak front and tidally-generated soliton packets produce stronger coupling between the acoustic waveguide modes than expected. Arrival time wander and signal spread show variability attributable to the presence of a shelf water meander, changes in frontal configuration, and variability in the soliton field. The highly-coupled nature of the acoustic mode propagation prevents detailed tomographic inversion. Instead, methods based on only the wander of the mode arrivals are used to estimate path-averaged temperatures and internal tide "strength". The modal phase structure function is introduced as a useful proxy for acoustic coherence, and is related via an integral transform to the environmental sound speed correlation function. Advantages of the method are its flexibility and division of the problem into independent contributions, such as from the water column and seabed.

Description: Office of Naval Research for providing funding for this thesis through AASERT Grant N00014-96-1-0918, and through ONR Grant N00014-98-1-0059.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 1999

Description: In this thesis the analysis of natural ice events is carried out based on direct measurements of ice-borne seismo-acoustic waves generated by ice fracturing processes. A major reason for studying this phenomenon is that this acoustic emission is a significant contributor to Arctic ocean ambient noise. Also the Arctic contains rich mineral and oil resources and in order to design mining facilities able to withstand the harsh environmental conditions, we need to have a better understanding of the processes of sea ice mechanics. The data analyzed in this thesis were collected during the Sea Ice Mechanics Initiative SIMI’94 experiment which was carried out in the spring of 1994 in the Central Arctic. One of the contributions of this thesis was the determination of the polarization characteristics of elastic waves using multicomponent geophone data. Polarization methods are well known in seismology, but they have never been used for ice event data processing. In this work one of the polarization methods so called Motion Product Detector method has been successfully applied for localization of ice events and determination of polarization characteristics of elastic waves generated by fracturing events. This application demonstrates the feasibility of the polarization method for ice event data processing because it allows one to identify areas of high stress concentration and "hot spots" in ridge building process. The identification of source mechanisms is based on the radiation patterns of the events. This identification was carried out through the analysis of the seismo-acoustic emission of natural ice events in the ice sheet. Previous work on natural ice event identification was done indirectly by analyzing the acoustic energy radiated into the water through coupling from elastic energy in the ice sheet. After identification of the events, the estimation of the parameters of fault processes in Arctic ice is carried out. Stress drop, seismic moment and the type of ice fracture are determined using direct near-field measurements of seismo-acoustic signals generated by ice events. Estimated values of fracture parameters were in good agreement with previous work for marginal ice zone. During data processing the new phenomenon was discovered: "edge waves", which are waves propagating back and forth along a newly opened ice lead. These waves exhibit a quasi-periodic behavior suggesting some kind of stick-slip generation mechanism somewhere along the length of the lead. The propagation characteristics of these waves were determined using seismic wavenumber estimation techniques. In the low frequency limit the dispersion can be modeled approximately by an interaction at the lead edges of the lowest order, antisymmetric modes of the infinite plate.

Description: Support for this thesis was provided by Office of Naval Research.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1999

Description: An algorithm is developed for underwater acoustic signal processing with an array of hydrophones. With various acoustic signals coming from different directions, the maximum likelihood approach is used to estimate the source bearings and time series. Simulated annealing is used to implement the resulting time-domain beamformer. Broadband signals in spatially correlated noise are treated. Previous time-domain beamformers did not consider the correlation between random noise, and they did not use the concept of maximum likelihood, which is asymptotically optimal. We show that improved resolution can be achieved using this new method.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ocean Engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 1988

Description: Two approaches to determining the ocean sound speed profile using measured acoustic modal eigenvalues are examined. Both methods use measured eigenvalues and mode dependent assumed values of the WKB phase integral as input data and use the WKB phase integral as a starting point for relating the index of refraction to depth. Inversion method one is restricted to monotonic or symmetric sound speed profiles and requires a measurement of the sound speed at one depth to convert the index of refraction profile to a sound speed profile. Inversion method two assumes that the sound speed at the surface and the minimum sound speed in the profile are known and is applicable to monotonic profiles and to general single duct sound speed profiles. For asymmetric profiles, inversion method two gives the depth difference between two points of equal sound speed in the portion of the profile having two turning points, and in the remainder of the profile it gives sound speed versus depth directly. A numerical implementation of the methods is demonstrated using idealized ocean sound speed profiles numerical experiments used to test the performance of the inversions using noisy data. The two methods are used to determine the sediment sound speed profiles in two shallow water waveguide models, and inversion method one is used to find the sediment sound speed profile using data from an experiment performed in the Gulf of Mexico.

Description: Funding through the Office of Naval Research Fellowship Program.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2011

Description: Current underwater acoustic channel estimation techniques generally apply linear MMSE estimation. This approach is optimal in a mean square error sense under the assumption that the impulse response fluctuations are well characterized by Gaussian statistics, leading to a Rayleigh distributed envelope. However, the envelope statistics of the underwater acoustic communication channel are often better modeled by the K-distribution. In this thesis, by presenting and analyzing field data to support this claim, I demonstrate the need to investigate channel estimation algorithms that exploit K-distributed fading statistics. The impact that environmental conditions and system parameters have on the resulting distribution are analyzed. In doing so, the shape parameter of the K-distribution is found to be correlated with the source-to-receiver distance, bandwidth, and wave height. Next, simulations of the scattering behavior are carried out in order to gain insight into the physical mechanism that cause these statistics to arise. Finally, MAP and MMSE based algorithms are derived assuming K-distributed fading models. The implementation of these estimation algorithms on simulated data demonstrates an improvement in performance over linear MMSE estimation.

Description: This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research grant #N00014-05-10085 and the National Science Foundation grant #OCE-0519903.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution April 8, 1988

Description: Several experiments are presented in this thesis which examine methods to measure and monitor fluid flow from hydrothermal vent fields. Simultaneous velocity, temperature, and conductivity data were collected in the convective flow emanating from a hydrothermal vent field located at 10°S6'N, 103° 41'W on the East Pacific rise. The horizontal profiles obtained indicate that the flow field approaches an ideal plume in the temperature and velocity distribution. Such parameters as total heat flow and maximum plume height can be estimated using either the velocity or the temperature information. The results of these independent calculations are in close agreement, yielding a total heat flow from this vent site of 3.7 ± 0.8 MW and a maximum height of 150±10 m. The nonlinear effects of large temperature variations on heat capacity and volume changes slightly alter the calculations applied to obtain these values. In Guaymas Basin, a twelve day time series of temperature data was collected from a point three centimeters above a diffuse hydrothermal flow area. Using concurrent tidal gauge data from the town of Guaymas it is shown that the effects of tidar currents can be strong enough to dominate the time variability of a temperature signal at a fixed point in hydrothermal flow and are a plausible explanation for the variations seen in the Guaymas Basin temperature data. Theoretical examination of hot, turbulent, buoyant jets exiting from hydrothermal chimneys revealed acoustic source mechanisms capable of producing sound at levels higher than ambient ocean noise. Pressure levels and frequency generated by hydrothermal jets are dependent on chimney dimensions, fluid velocity and temperature and therefore can be used to monitor changes in these parameters over time. A laboratory study of low Mach number jet noise and amplification by flow inhomogeneities confirmed theoretical predictions for homogeneous jet noise power and frequency. The increase in power due to convected flow inhomogeneities, however, was lower in the near field than expected. Indirect evidence of hydrothermal sound fields (Reidesel et al., 1982; Bibee and Jacobson, 1986) showing anomalous high power and low frequency noise associated with vents is due to processes other than jet noise. On Axial Seamount, Juan de Fuca Ridge, high quality acoustic noise measurements were obtained by two hydrophones located 3 m and 40 m from an active hydrothermal vent, in an effort to determine the feasibility of monitoring hydrothermal vent activity through floW noise generation. Most of the noise field could be attributed to ambient ocean noise sources of microseisms, distant shipping and weather, punctuated by local ships and biological sources. Water/rock interface waves of local origin, were detected which showed high pressure amplitudes near the seafloor and, decaying with vertical distance, produced low pressures at 40 m above the bottom. Detection of vent signals was hampered by unexpected spatial non- stationarity due to shadowing effects of the caldera wall. No continuous vent signals were deemed significant based on a criterion of 90% probability of detection and 5% probability of false alarm. However, a small signal near 40 Hz, with a power level of 1x10-4 Pa2/Hz was noticed on two records taken near the Inferno black smoker. The frequency of this signal is consistent with predictions and the power level suggests the occurrence of jet noise amplification due to convected density inhomogeneities. Ambient noise from the TAG (Trans-Atlantic Geotraverse) hydrothermal area on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge near 26°N, in the frequency band 1-30 Hz at a range of 0.75-14 km from the site of an extremely active high temperature hydrothermal vent field (Rona, 1986) was examined. The ambient noise field exhibits great temporal and spatial variations attributed in part to typical ocean noise sources such as distant shipping and microseisms. Power spectral levels as measured at each of six ocean bottom hydrophones (OBH) were used to estimate the location of point sources of sound in the area, if any. The hydrothermal vent did not produce enough sound to be located as a point source using data from the OBH array. The only consistently identifiable point source found with the data set was generating sound in a 0.8-3.5 Hz bandwidth and located outside the median valley. It appears to be harmonic tremor associated with the tip of a ridge on the western side of the spreading axis and may be volcanic in origin.

Description: This work was supported by the WHOI/MIT Education Office, the Center for Analysis of Marine Systems, the National Science Foundation (grant OCE83-l0l75), NOAA National Sea Grant College Program Office, Dept. of Commerce under grant #NA86-AA-D-SG090, WHOI Sea Grant (R/6-l4), the Office of Naval Research grant #N0014-87-K-0007, and the NOAA Vents Program.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 1998

Description: In practical applications with bathymetric sidescan sonars, the multipath reflections and other directional interferences are the key limiting factors for a better performance. This thesis proposes a new scheme to deal with the interferences using a multiple-row bathymetric sidescan sonar. Instead of smoothing the measurements over some time or angle intervals, which was previously widely investigated, we resolve the multipath interferences from the direct signal. Two approaches on signal direction-of-arrival DOA and amplitude estimation are developed, the correlated signal direction estimate CSDE for three-row systems and the ESPRIT-based method. These approaches are compared using different sonar data models, including a stochastic model from the statistical analysis on bottom scattering and a coherent model from the analysis on interference field; the simulations show the ESPRIT-based approach is quite robust at the angular separation of 100 between two sources and at the signal-to-noise ratio above 10dB except for highly coherent or temporally correlated signals, for which CSDE works very well. The computer simulation results and the discussions on practical algorithm implementation indicate the proposed scheme can be applied to a real multiple-row bathymetric sidescan sonar. With the capability to simultaneously resolve two or more directional signals, the new sonar model should work better for a wider variety of practical situations in shallow water with out significant increase of the system cost.

Description: Funding supporting my thesis research project was provided by the Office of Naval Research ONR.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution August 1988

Description: In order to determine the efficacy of tomographic reconstructions of the ocean sound speed structure in improving acoustic field predictions for source localization, a 150 km by 350 km volume of ocean 3000 meters deep was synthetically modeled to be similar to the Gulf Stream system, including an eddy and a front. The features were Gaussian, with the eddy's maximum sound speed perturbation being 10ms-1 and the front's maximum perturbation 15ms-1. Two vertical slices through this system were inverted in a synthetic tomography experiment using linear optimal estimation theory. Inversions were also performed using XSV and satellite sea surface temperature data. Gaussian fits to the reconstructed features were constructed for use with a three dimensional raytrace program (HARPO). Three dimensional rays were propagated both through the reconstructions and the original model. Travel time versus intensity (transmission loss) for the eigenrays was used as a basis for intercomparison. Tomographic results showed good reconstruction for a first iteration of the inversion, but inadequate vertical resolution. Iterations and the use of more refractive eigenrays are needed for improvement of the reconstruction, especially for the front. Reconstructed results for the acoustic field should improve conventional beamforming, but are probably inadequate for matched field processing.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution December 1985

Description: Samples from time-series sediment traps deployed in three distinct oceanographic settings (North Pacific, Panama Basin, and Black Sea) provide strong evidence for rapid settling of marine particles by aggregates. Particle water column residence times were determined by measuring the time lag between the interception of a flux event in a shallow trap and the interception of the same event in a deeper trap at the same site. Effective sinking speeds were determined by dividing the vertical offset of the traps (meters) by the interception lag time (days). At station Papa in the North Pacific, all particles settle at 175 m day-1, regardless of their composition, indicating that all types of material may be settling in common packages. Evidence from the other two sites (Panama Basin and Black Sea) shows that particle transport may be vertical, lateral, or a combination of directions, with much of the Black Sea flux signal being dominated by lateral input. In order to ascertain whether marine snow aggregates represent viable transport packages, surveys were conducted of the abundance of these aggregates at several stations in the eastern North Atlantic and Panama Basin using a photographic technique. Marine snow aggregates were found in concentrations ranging from ~1 mm3 liter-1 to more than 500 mm3 liter-1. In open ocean environments, abundances are higher near the surface (production) and decline with depth (decomposition). However, in areas near sources of deep input of resuspended material, concentrations reach mid-water maxima, reflecting lateral transport. A model is proposed to relate the observed aggregate abundances, time series sediment flux and inferred circulation. In this model, depthwise variations in sediment flux and aggregate abundance result from suspension from the sea floor and lateral transport of suspended aggregates which were produced or modified on the sea floor. Temporal changes in sediment flux result from variations in the input of fast-sinking material which falls from the surface, intercepts the suspended aggregates, and transports them to the sea floor. A new combination sediment trap and camera system was built and deployed in the Panama Basin with the intent of measuring the flux of marine snow aggregates. This device consists of a cylindrical tube which is open at the top and sealed at the bottom by a clear plate. Material lying on the bottom plate is illuminated by strobe lights mounted in the wall of the cylinder and photographed by a camera which is positioned below the bottom plate. Flux is determined as the number of aggregates arriving during the time interval between photographic frames (# area-1 time-1). Results show that essentially all material arrives in the form of aggregates with minor contributions of fecal pellets and solitary particles. Sinking speeds (m day-1), calculated by dividing the flux of aggregates (# m-2 day-1) by their abundance (# m-3), indicate that the larger (4-5mm) aggregates are flocculent and sink slowly (~1m day-1) while the smaller aggregates (1-2.5mm) are more compact and sink more quickly (~36m day-1). These large, slow-sinking aggregates may have been re-suspended from the sediment water interface at nearby basin margins.

Description: This research was supported by ONR contract numbers N00014-82-C-0019 and N00014-85-C-0001, NSF grant numbers OCE-83-09024, OCE-84-17106, and DPP-85-01152 and the WHO1 education office.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 1986

Description: A study of the remineralization of organic carbon was conducted in the organic-rich sediments of Buzzards Bay, MA. Major processes affecting the carbon chemistry in sediments are reflected by changes in the stable carbon isotope ratios of dissolved inorganic carbon (ΣCO2) in sediment pore water. Six cores were collected seasonally over a period of two years. The following species were measured in the pore waters: ΣCO2, δ13C-ΣCO2, PO4, ΣH2S, Alk, DOC, and Ca. Measurements of pore water collected seasonally show large gradients with depth, which are larger in summer than in winter. The δ13C (PDB) of ΣCO2 varies from 1.3 o/oo in the bottom water to approximately -10 o/oo at 30 cm. During all seasons, there was a trend towards more negative values with depth in the upper 8 cm due to the remineralization of organic matter. There was a trend toward more positive values below 8 cm, most likely due to biological irrigation of sediments with bottom water. Below 16-20 cm, a negative gradient was re-established which indicates a return to remineralization as the main process affecting pore water chemistry. Using the ΣCO2 depth profile, it was estimated that 67-85 gC/m2 are oxidized annually and 5 gC/m2-yr are buried. The amount of carbon oxidized represented remineralization occurring within the sediments. This estimate indicated that approximately 20% of the annual primary productivity reached the sediments. The calculated remineralization rates varied seasonally with the high of 7.5 x 10-9 mol/L-sec observed in August 84 and the low (0.6 x 10-9) in December 83. The calculated remineralization rates were dependent on the amount of irrigation in the sediments; if the irrigation parameter is known to ±20%, then the remineralization rates are known to this certainty also. The amount of irrigation in the sediments was estimated using the results of a seasonal study of 222Rn/22R6a disequilibria at the same study site (Martin, 1985). Estimates of the annual remineralization in the sediments using solid-phase data indicated that the solid-phase profiles were not at steady-state concentrations. The isotopic signature of ΣCO2 was used as an indicator of the processes affecting ΣCO2 in pore water. During every month, the oxidation of organic carbon to CO2 provided over half of the carbon added to the ΣCO2 pool. However, in every month, the δ13C of ΣCO2 added to the pore water in the surface sediments was greater than -15 o/oo, significantly greater than the δ13C of solid-phase organic carbon in the sediments (-20.6 o/oo). The δ13C of ΣCO2 added to the pore water in the sediments deeper than 7 cm was between -20 and -21 o/oo, similar to the organic carbon in the sediments. Possible explanations of the 13C-enrichment observed in the surface sediments were: a) significant dissolution of CaC0, (δ13C = + 1.7 o/oo), b) the addition of significant amounts of carbonate ion from bottom water to pore water, c) an isotopic difference between the carbon oxidized in the sediments and that remaining in the sediments. The effect of CaCO3 dissolution was quantified using measured dissolved Ca profiles and was not large enough to explain the observed isotopic enrichment. An additional source of 13C-enriched carbon was bottom water carbonate ion. In every month studied, there was a net flux of ΣCO2 from pore water to bottom water. The flux of pore water ΣCO2 to bottom water ranged from a minimum of 10 x 10-12 mol/cm2-sec in December 83 to a maximum of 50 x 10-12 mol/cm2-sec in August 84. However, because the pH of bottom water was about 8 while that of the pore water was less than or equal to 7, the relative proportion of the different species of inorganic carbon (H2CO*3, HCO-3, CO2-3 was very different in bottom water and pore water. Thus, while there was a net flux of ΣCO2 from pore water to bottom water, there was a flux of carbonate ion from bottom water to pore water. Because bottom water ΣCO2 was more 13C-enriched than pore water ΣCO2, the transfer of bottom water carbonate ion to pore water was a source of 13C-enriched carbon to the pore water. If the δ13C of CO2 added to the pore water from the oxidation of organic carbon was -20.6 o/oo, then the flux of Co2-3 from bottom water to pore water must have been 10-30% of the total flux of ΣCO2 from pore water to bottom water. This is consistent with the amount calculated from the observed gradient in carbonate ion. Laboratory experiments were conducted to determine whether the δ13C of CO2 produced from the oxidation of organic carbon (δ13C-OCox) was different from the δ13C of organic carbon in the sediments (δ13C-SOC). In the laboratory experiments, mud from the sampling site was incubated at a constant temperature. Three depths were studied (0-3, 10-15, and 20-25 cm). For the first study (IE1), sediment was stirred to homogenize it before packing into centrifuge tubes for incubation. For the second study (IE2), sediment was introduced directly into glass incubation tubes by subcoring. The second procedure greatly reduced disturbance to the sediment. Rates of CO2 production were calculated from the concentrations of ΣCO2 measured over up to 46 days. In both studies, the values of Rc in the deeper intervals were about 10% of the surface values. This was consistent with the field results, although the rates decreased more rapidly in the field. In all cases, the remineralization rates during the beginning of IE1 were much greater than those at the beginning of IE2. The sediment for IE1 was collected in February 84. The measured value of Rc in the surface sediment of the laboratory experiment (24 x 10-9 mol/L-sec) was much greater than the value of Rc observed in the field in another winter month, December 83 (.62 x 10-9). The sediment for IE2 was collected in August 85. The measured values of Rc in the surface sediment (6.6-12 x 10-9 mol/L-sec) were consistent with the field values from August 84 (7.5 x 10-9). The ΣCO2 results indicated that IE2 reproduced field conditions more accurately than IE1 did. The isotopic results from the experiments strongly suggested that δ13C-OCox in the surface sediments (-17.8 o/oo ± 1.9 o/oo) was greater than δ13C-SOC (-20.6 ± 0.2 o/oo). The magnitude of the observed fractionation was small enough that the observed values of δ13C-ΣCO2 in the pore waters could be explained by fractionated oxidation coupled with the diffusion of carbonate ion from bottom water to pore water. The observed fractionation was most likely due to the multiple sources of organic carbon to coastal sediments. A study of the natural levels of radiocarbon In these sediments indicated that the carbon preserved in the sediments is approximately 30% terrestrial while the rest is from phytoplankton.

Description: Financial support was provided by the Education Office of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program In Oceanography, by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to the Coastal Research Center, WHOI, and by the National Science foundation under grant NSF OCE83-15412.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution April 1975

Description: The influence of natural short-term fluctuations in environmental parameters on three components of transient benthic invertebrate community structure: abundance of individuals and species, biomass of individuals, and species diversity, were investigated in this study. The effect of low dissolved-oxygen on transient benthic community structure was studied with samples from Golfo Dulce, an intermittently anoxic basin off the west coast of Costa Rica and the Posa de Cariaco, an anoxoic trench off the north coast of Venezuela. Periodic fluctuations in oxygen concentration were accompanied by a community numerically dominated by a single polychaete species and low species diversity. As the frequency of fluctuations in oxygen concentration decreased, the number of species and individuals in the community increased with a corresponding increase in species diversity. In contrast to fluctuating oxygen conditions which eliminated many species from the community, fluctuating amounts of suspended matter in the bottom water allowed one species to proliferate while maintaining the total species list length. High rates of terrigenious sedimentation occurring naturally off the Spanish Sahara coast produced conditions which apparently hampered the feeding mechanisms of a spionid polychaete. Further offshore, where the diversity should be expected to increase, the spionids were able to flourish. The result was greater numerical abundance and biomass offshore and a lower transient diversity value. Results of simulation of catastophic burial by in situ burial of small isolated portions of Buzzards Bay sediment indicated that sedimentation rates recorded off Spanish Sahara would not eliminate species by burial. However, the small size of the organisms found off Spanish Sahara is probably a result of the constant expenditure of energy for escape. In regions of fluctuating environmental conditions, diversity values are low, principally because of dominance by a single species. Increasingly stable conditions, even though stressful, result in a more even distribution of individuals among the species present and a correspondingly high transient value.

Description: This work was funded by a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Predoctoral Fellowship, N.S.F. Grant GA-3655l, and N.S.F. Grant GA-33502.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 1985

Description: The acoustic properties of marine sediments have a direct effect on the propagation of sound in the ocean. In the frequency range of interest (50 - 500 Hz) the sediment can be modelled as a fluid. Assuming horizontal stratification of the ocean bottom, the acoustic parameters of interest are the compressional wave speed, the compressional wave attenuation and density as a function of depth. An inverse method based on a perturbation technique is presented in this thesis for the determination of these parameters. A monochromatic source experiment is proposed because of the desirability of such an experiment for determining the acoustic properties of an anelastic medium. The input information is the plane wave reflection coerricent as a function of the angle of incidence at a fixed frequency. A nonlinear integral equation relating the variations of these acoustic properties from a known reference value to the plane wave reflection coefficient is derived. This is then linearised using the Born approximation. The region of validity of the Born approximation is derived and based on this the optimum angular aperture for the input data is obtained. The linearised integral equation is a Fredholm integral equation of the first kind. An acceptable stable solution of the integral equation is obtained by imposing a priori constraints on the solution. The inversion method is tested using synthetic data and inversions are carried out for various examples of the attenuation coefficient profile and the sound speed profile. The results obtained with noise free data show good agreement between the true profiles and the reconstructed profiles. The resolution obtainable with the data set is studied using the resolving power theory of Backus and Gilbert and the inversion method is shown to provide adequate resolution. The effect of additive noise in data is examined and inversions performed with noisy data yielded stable acceptable results.

Description: I acknowledge the financial support provided by the education office in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Office of Naval Research.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 1986

Description: The dual issues of modal decomposition for tonal sound fields and the temporal coherence of the modal amplitudes are investigated for the case of the central Arctic sound channel at very low frequencies (15-80 Hz). A detailed study of the Arctic modal structure for these frequencies reveals the central role played by the strong Arctic surface duct. The performance of each of four different modal beamforming algorithms when applied to the vertical array deployed during the FRAM IV Arctic Acoustic Experiment is analyzed. A multiple beam (or decoupled beam) least squares processor produces the most acceptable results for Arctic conditions. The modal decomposition is sensitive to vertical array tilt caused by hydrodynamic drag; a technique for its estimation from the acoustie data is developed. Tonal data taken from both the horizontal and vertical arrays deployed during FRAM IV is analyzed. Horizontal array results confirm the modal amplitudes generated from vertical array data. The rough surface scattering from the ice canopy places an upper limit of 40 Hz on efficient surface duct propagation. Attenuation measurements for the first mode show excellent agreement with predictions made for ice scattering using the method of small perturbations and experimental ice statistics. The high levels of coherence observed (O.95 to 0.99) show that tonal signal propagation in the Arctic channel is essentially deterministic for time periods well in excess of one hour. The various modes may then be considered to maintain a constant phase relationship over time.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution August 1980

Description: Dissolved free amino acids (DFAA) were measured in interstitial water samples squeezed from sediments collected in a variety of depositional environments. These sediments were further characterized by measurements of total organic carbon, total nitrogen, dissolved organic carbon, total hydrolyzable amino acids, and pore water-dissolved remineralization products. Surface sediments from the oxygen minimum zone of the Peru Upwelling Region, which consisted of a filamentous bacterial mat, were sampled at three locations. DFAA concentrations within the mat ranged from 5 to 220 μM, with the highest concentrations found in the upper 4 cm at two stations on the landward and seaward edges of the zone, and lower concentrations at a station in the middle of the oxygen minimum zone. Within cores, lower concentrations were found at depths below the mat; and below 30 cm depth concentrations were between 0.7 and 3 μM. Two short cores of offshore sediments had concentrations between 14 and 40 μM (1400 m depth) and between 3 and 8 μM (5200 m). Glutamic acid was the predominant amino acid in nearly all surface sediments samples, making up 30 to 70 mole %. In sediments below 15 cm depth, β-aminoglutaric acid was often more abundant than glutamic acid and other amino acids were virtually absent. Glutamic acid, both from several analyses performed during this work and from data available in the literature is a major DFAA of bacterial pools, and bacteria are a likely source for the high concentrations seen in interstitial water samples. DFAA may be extracted from living cells by the squeezing process, or may be excreted by the bacteria under natural conditions. β-Aminoglutaric acid is s non-protein amino acid isomer of glutamic acid which has not been previously reported as a natural product. However, this work has shown it to be a constituent of the free amino acid pools of some bacteria at about 5 mole %. Its much larger relative abundance in sediments could stem from organisms which biosynthesize greater amounts than those analyzed, or from relatively slow biodegradation. Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts surface sediments (17 m water depth) also contained high DFAA concentrations, near; 50 μM, which decreased gradually with depth to about 5 μM at 30 cm. Glutamic acid and β-aminoglutaric acid were the major components, with β-aminoglutaric acid becoming relatively more abundant with depth in core. Repeated sampling of this station was carried out, and both the concentration and composition of DFAA in replicate samples was very similar. Sediments from the Pettaquamscutt River Estuary, Rhode Island (an anoxic basin), had low DFAA concentrations ranging from 2 to 6 μM. Glutamic and β-aminoglutaric acids made up 30 to 50 % of the total. Three cores of Gulf of Maine basin sediments had DFAA concentrations and compositions which were similar to each other and to Buzzards Bay sediments, except that glycine was a major constituent of some of the samples. Its distribution was irregular over the less than 30 cm depth intervals sampled. Glycine is the major DFAA in the pools of many benthic invertebrates. Its presence in these cores is consistent with independent evidence that Gulf of Maine basin sediments are extensively bioturbated. Two cores of carbonate-rich sediments from the continental rise to the east of the Gulf of Maine and from the Bermuda Rise had surface sediment DFAA concentrations of 33 and 0.9 μM, respectively. Despite the large difference in concentration, compositions were very similar, with glycine and glutamic acid the major constituents. The very low concentrations in the Bermuda Rise sediments may be related to very low metabolizable organic carbon concentrations. Two nonprotein amino acids, γ-aminobutyric acid and β-alanine, were major constituents of the total hydrolyzable amino acids in the Bermuda Rise sediments. Biological processes, specifically microbial, appear to be responsible for the major features of DFAA concentration and composition in the sediments studied. The concentrations of DFAA measured could be of significance to the nutrition of benthic organisms via transepidermal uptake or to the formation of humic substances in sediments, if these levels are found outside cells . However, as a sink for DFAA in sediments, the latter two processes are slow relative to microbial uptake.

Description: Financial support was provided by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Education Office, the Paul M. Fye Fellowship, ONR Contract N00014-79-C-0071, and NSF Grant No. OCE 79-08665. Travel funds to Peru were provided by NSF Grant No. OCE 77-26180.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution December 1991

Description: Breaking waves dissipate energy, transfer momentum from the wind to surface currents and breaking enhances the transfer of gas and mass across the air-sea interface. Breaking waves are believed to be the dominant source of sea surface sound at frequencies greater than 500 Hz and the presence of breaking waves on the ocean surface has been shown to enhance the scattering of microwave radiation. Previous studies have shown that breaking waves can be detected by measuring the microwave backscatter and acoustic radiation from breaking waves. However, these techniques have not yet proven effective for studying the dynamics of breaking. The primary motivation for the research presented in this thesis was to determine whether measurements of the sound generated by breaking waves could be used to quantitatively study the dynamics of the breaking process. Laboratory measurements of the microwave backscatter and acoustic radiation from two-dimensional breaking waves are described in Chapter 2. The major findings of this Chapter are: 1) the mean square acoustic pressure and backscattered microwave power correlate with the wave slope and dissipation for waves of moderate slope, 2) the mean square acoustic pressure and backscattered microwave power correlate strongly with each other, and 3) the amount of acoustic energy radiated by an individual breaking event scaled with the amount of mechanical energy dissipated by breaking. The observed correlations with the mean square acoustic pressure are only relevant for frequencies greater than 2200 Hz because lower frequencies were below the first acoustic cut-off frequency of the wave channel. In order to study the lower frequency sound generated by breaking waves another series of two-dimensional breaking experiments was conducted. Sound at frequencies as low as 20 Hz was observed and the mean square acoustic pressure in the frequency band from 20 Hz-l kHz correlated strongly with the wave slope and dissipation. A characteristic low frequency signal was observed immediately following the impact of the plunging wave crest. The origin of this low frequency signal was found to be the pulsating cylinders of air which are entrained by the plunging waves. The pulsation frequency correlated with both the wave slope and dissipation. Following the characteristic constant frequency signal, approximately 0.25 s after the initial impact of the plunging crest, another low frequency signal was typically observed. These signals were generally lower in frequency initially and then increased in frequency as time progressed. To determine if three-dimensional effects were important in the sound generation process and to measure the sound beneath larger breaking waves a series of experiments was conducted in a large multi-paddle wave basin. Three-dimensional breaking waves were generated and the sound produced by breaking was measured in the frequency range from 10 Hz to 20 kHz. The observed sound spectra showed significant increases in level across the entire bandwidth from 10 Hz to 20 kHz and the spectra sloped at -5 to-6 dB per octave at frequencies greater than 1 kHz. The mean square acoustic pressure in the frequency band from 10 Hz to 150 Hz correlated with the wave amplitude similar to the results obtained in the two-dimensional breaking experiments. Large amplitude low frequency spectral peaks were observed approximately 0.75 s after the initial impact of the plunging crests. It was postulated that the low frequency signals observed some time after the initial impact of the plunging crests for both the two and three-dimensional breakers were caused by the collective oscillation of bubble clouds. Void fraction measurements taken by Eric Lamarre were available for five breaking events and therefore the average sound speed inside the bubble clouds and their radii were known. Using this information the resonant frequencies of a two-dimensional cylindrical bubble cloud of equal radius and sound speed were calculated. The frequencies of the observed signals matched closely with the calculated resonant frequencies of the first and second mode of the two-dimensional cylindrical bubble cloud. The close agreement supports the hypothesis that the low frequency signals were produced by the collective oscillation of bubble clouds. In Chapter 4 a model of the sound produced by breaking waves is presented which uses the sound radiated by a single bubble oscillating at its linear resonant frequency and the bubble size distribution to estimate the sound spectrum. The model generates a damped sinusiodal pulse for every bubble formed, as calculated from the bubble size distribution. If the range to the receiver is known then the only unknown parameters are ε, the initial fractional amplitude of the bubble oscillation and L, the dipole moment arm or twice the depth of the bubble below the free surface. It was found that if the product εxL is independent of the bubble radius the model reproduces the shape and magnitude of the observed sound spectrum accurately. The success of the model implies that it may be possible to calculate the bubble size distribution from the sound spectrum. The model was validated using data from experiments where the breaking events were small scale gently spilling waves (Medwin and Daniel, 1990).

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2001

Description: Matched-field methods concern estimation of source location and/or ocean environmental parameters by exploiting full wave modeling of acoustic waveguide propagation. Typical estimation performance demonstrates two fundamental limitations. First, sidelobe ambiguities dominate the estimation at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), leading to a threshold performance behavior. Second, most matched-field algorithms show a strong sensitivity to environmental/system mismatch, introducing some biased estimates at high SNR. In this thesis, a quantitative approach for ambiguity analysis is developed so that different mainlobe and sidelobe error contributions can be compared at different SNR levels. Two large-error performance bounds, the Weiss-Weinstein bound (WWB) and Ziv-Zakai bound (ZZB), are derived for the attainable accuracy of matched-field methods. To include mismatch effects, a modified version of the ZZB is proposed. Performance analyses are implemented for source localization under a typical shallow water environment chosen from the Shallow Water Evaluation Cell Experiments (SWellEX). The performance predictions describe the simulations of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) well, including the mean square error in all SNR regions as well as the bias at high SNR. The threshold SNR and bias predictions are also verified by the SWellEX experimental data processing. These developments provide tools to better understand some fundamental behaviors in matched-field performance and provide benchmarks to which various ad hoc algorithms can be compared.

Description: Financial support for my research was provided by the Office of Naval Research and the WHOI Education Office.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2000

Description: A channel characterization experiment for the underwater acoustic communication channel was carried out at Scripps Pier in May 1999. The experiment investigated acoustic transmission in very shallow water and breaking waves. In analyzing the data, several questions arose. The majority of the acoustic channel probe data was corrupted by crosstalk in the receiver array cable. This thesis investigates methods to correct for the effects of the crosstalk, to attempt to recover the channel probe data. In selected regions, the crosstalk could be removed quite effectively using a linear least-squares method to estimate the crosstalk coefficients. The bulk of the data could not be corrected, however, primarily due to crosstalk from a receiver channel which was not recorded, and hence could not be well estimated. A second question addressed by this thesis is concerned with acoustic propagation in shallow water under bubble clouds. The breaking waves injected air deep into the water column. The resulting bubble clouds heavily attenuated acoustic signals, effectively causing total dropouts of the acoustic communication channel. Due to buoyancy, the bubbles gradually rise, and the communication channel clears. The channel clearing was significantly slower than predicted by geometric ray acoustic propagation models, however. Proposed explanations included secondary, unobserved, breaking events causing additional bubble injection; delayed rising of bubbles due to turbulent currents; or failure of the geometric ray model due to suppression by bubble clouds of acoustic signals which are not along the geometric ray paths. This thesis investigated the final hypothesis, modeling the acoustic propagation in Scripps Pier environment, using the full wave equation modeling package OASES. It was determined that the attenuation of the propagating acoustic signal is not accurately predicted by the bubble-induced attenuation along the geometric ray path.

Description: For financial support, thanks to the National Science Foundation for funding me on a Graduate Research Fellowship, and thanks to the WHOI Education Office for supplementing that fellowship.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution January 1987

Description: This thesis presents the theoretical and computational underpinnings of a novel approach to the determination of the acoustic parameters of the ocean bottom using a monochromatic source. The problem is shown to be equivalent to that of the reconstruction of the potential in a Schrodinger equation from the knowledge of the plane-wave reflection coefficient as a function of vertical wavenumber, r(kz) for all real positive k z. First, the reflection coefficient is shown to decay asymptotically at least as fast as (1/kz2) for large kz and is therefore inteqrable. The Gelfand-Levitan inversion procedure is extended to include the case of basement velocity higher than the velocity of sound in water. The neglect of bound states is shown to be justified in both clayey silt and silty clay at the 220 Hz frequency of operation. Three methods for the numerical solution of the integral equation are investigated. The first one is an "Improved Born approximation" wherein the solution is given as a series expansion the first term of which is the Born approximation while the second term represents a substantial and yet easy to implement improvement over Born. The two other methods are based on a discretization of the Gelfand-Levitan integral equation, and both avoid a matrix inversion: one by employing a recursive procedure, and the other by coupling the Gelfand-Levitan equation with a partial differential equation. Bounds are obtained on errors in the solution due either to discretization or to data inaccuracy. These methods are tested on synthetic data obtained from known geoacoustic models of the ocean bottom. Results are found to be very accurate particularly at the top of the sediment layer with resolution of less than the wavelength of the acoustic source in the water. Several effects are investigated, such as sampling, attenuation, and noise. Also examined is the gradual restriction of the reflection coefficient to a finite range of vertical wave numbers and the consequent progressive deterioration of the reconstruction. The analysis shows how to reconstruct velocity profiles in the presence of density variation when the experiment is conducted at two frequencies. Our results provide a good understanding of the issues involved in conducting a monochromatic deep ocean bottom experiment and constitute a promising technique for processing the experimental data when it becomes available.

Description: Support for this thesis was provided in part by the education office at WHOI and by the Office of Naval Research.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2000

Description: Phosphorus, an essential nutrient, is removed from the oceans only through burial with marine sediments. Organic phosphorus (Porg) constitutes an important fraction (ca. 25%) of total-P in marine sediments. However, given the inherent lability of primary Porg biochemicals, it is a puzzle that any Porg is preserved in marine sediments. The goal of this thesis was to address this apparent paradox by linking bulk and molecular-level Porg information. A newly-developed sequential extraction method, which isolates sedimentary Porg reservoirs based on solubility, was used in concert with 31P nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (31P-NMR) to quantify Porg functional group concentrations. The coupled extraction/31P-NMR method was applied to three sediment cores from the Santa Barbara Basin, and the first-ever high-resolution depth profiles of molecular-level Porg distribution during diagenesis were generated. These depth profiles were used to consider regulation of Porg distribution by biomass abundance, chemical structure, and physical protection mechanisms. Biomass cannot account for more than a few percent of sedimentary Porg. No evidence for direct structural control on remineralization of Porg was found. Instead, sorptive protection appears to be an important mechanism for Porg preservation, and structure may act as a secondary control due to preferential sorption of specific Porg compound classes.

Description: My first three years in the Joint Program were funded by a fellowship from the Office of Naval Research. The WHOI education office provided funding for the balance of my graduate studies.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2002

Description: One of the major problems in wireless communications is compensating for the time-varying intersymbol interference (ISI) due to multipath. Underwater acoustic communications is one such type of wireless communications in which the channel is highly dynamic and the amount of ISI due to multipath is relatively large. In the underwater acoustic channel, associated with each of the deterministic propagation paths are macro-multipath fluctuations which depend on large scale environmental features and geometry, and micro-multipath fluctuations which are dependent on small scale environmental inhomogeneities. For arrivals which are unsaturated or partially saturated, the fluctuations in ISI are dominated by the macro-multipath fluctuations resulting in correlated fluctuations between different taps of the sampled channel impulse response. Traditional recursive least squares (RLS) algorithms used for adapting channel equalizers do not exploit this structure. A channel subspace post-filtering algorithm that treats the least squares channel estimate as a noisy time series and exploits the channel correlation structure to reduce the channel estimation error is presented. The improvement in performance of the algorithm with respect to traditional least squares algorithms is predicted theoretically, and demonstrated using both simulation and experimental data. An adaptive equalizer structure that explicitly uses this improved estimate of the channel impulse response is discussed. The improvement in performance of such an equalizer due to the use of the post-filtered estimate is also predicted theoretically, and demonstrated using both simulation and experimental data.

Description: This research was supported by an ONR Graduate Traineeship Award Grant #N00014-00-10049.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2009

Description: A confluence of several coastal oceanographic features creates an acoustically interesting region with high variability along the New England Shelfbreak. Determining the effect of the variability on acoustic propagation is critical for sonar systems. In the Nantucket Shoals area of the Middle Atlantic Bight, two experiments, the New England Shelfbreak Tests (NEST), were conducted in May and June, 2007 and 2008, to study this variability. A comprehensive climatology of the region along with the experimental data provided detailed information about the variability of the water column, particularly the temperature and sound speed fields. Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of the ocean sound speed field defined a set of perturbations to the background sound speed field for each of the NEST Scanfish surveys. Attenuation due to bottom sediments is the major contributor of transmission loss in the ocean. In shallow water, available propagation paths most often include bottom interaction. Perturbations in the ocean sound speed field can cause changes in the angle of incidence of sound rays with the bottom, which can result in changes to the amount of sound energy lost to the bottom. In lieu of complex transmission loss models, the loss/bounce model provides a simpler way to predict transmission loss changes due to perturbations in the background sound speed field in the ocean. Using an acoustic wavenumber perturbation method, sound speed perturbations, defined by the ocean EOF modes, are translated into a change in the horizontal wavenumber, which in turn changes the modal angle of incidence. The loss/bounce model calculates the loss of sound energy (dB) per bottom bounce over a given distance based on the change in angle of incidence. Evaluated using experimental data from NEST, the loss/bounce model provided accurate predictions of changes to transmission loss due to perturbations of the background sound speed field.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2009

Description: Mode filtering is most commonly implemented using the sampled mode shape or pseudoinverse algorithms. Buck et al placed these techniques in the context of a broader maximum a posteriori (MAP) framework. However, the MAP algorithm requires that the signal and noise statistics be known a priori. Adaptive array processing algorithms are candidates for improving performance without the need for a priori signal and noise statistics. A variant of the physically constrained, maximum likelihood (PCML) algorithm is developed for mode filtering that achieves the same performance as the MAP mode filter yet does not need a priori knowledge of the signal and noise statistics. The central innovation of this adaptive mode filter is that the received signal's sample covariance matrix, as estimated by the algorithm, is constrained to be that which can be physically realized given a modal propagation model and an appropriate noise model. The first simulation presented in this thesis models the acoustic pressure field as a complex Gaussian random vector and compares the performance of the pseudoinverse, reduced rank pseudoinverse, sampled mode shape, PCML minimum power distortionless response (MPDR), PCML-MAP, and MAP mode filters. The PCML-MAP filter performs as well as the MAP filter without the need for a priori data statistics. The PCML-MPDR filter performs nearly as well as the MAP filter as well, and avoids a sawtooth pattern that occurs with the reduced rank pseudoinverse filter. The second simulation presented models the underwater environment and broadband communication setup of the Shallow Water 2006 (SW06) experiment. Data processing results are presented from the Shallow Water 2006 experiment, showing the reduced sensitivity of the PCML-MPDR filter to white noise compared with the reduced rank pseudoinverse filter. Lastly, a linear, decision-directed, RLS equalizer is used to combine the response of several modes and its performance is compared with an equalizer applied directly to the data received on each hydrophone.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution November 1992

Description: This thesis examines the degradation pathways of chlorophyll in the Black Sea water column and sediments. Measurements are made of total chlorophyll in sediment traps from two locations and depths in the water column, and at two locations in surface sediments. Individual chlorophyll degradation products are also identified. This data is used to construct a mass balance of chlorophyll production and sedimentation showing the major pathways for chlorophyll loss and the ultimate sedimentary sinks. The distribution of chlorophyll degradation products is also analyzed down core and related to environmental changes in the Black Sea Several new sinks for chlorophyll degradation products are identified. Steryl esters of pyropheophorbide-a are identified in sediment trap and sediment samples. It is thought that these compounds are formed during grazing. In sediment traps it is found that the distribution of the sterols esterified to pyropheophorbide-a change with season and that the sterols esterified are related to the distribution of sterols synthesized by the phytoplankton living in the photic zone at the time of production. Analysis of pyropheophorbide-a steryl esters in sediments shows the distribution of sterols to be quantitatively and qualitatively more similar to the distribution of free sterols in sediment traps than in sediments. The esterification of the sterols to pyropheophorbide-a apparently prevents the preferential removal of 4-desmethylsterols relative to 4-methylsterols during degradation of the sterol esters. Chlorophyll degradation products which are incorporated into high molecular weight material and material which is only accessible with strong acid are also identified. The chlorophyll degradation products incorporated into these structures represent only a few percent of the total structure. In the high molecular weight material, only phorbins derived from chlorophyll-a are identifies, where as in the acid extractable material, porphyrins are also identified. In surface sediments, the acid extractable chlorophyll degradations products and the solvent extractable macromolecular chlorophyll degradation products each comprise approximately 30% of total sedimentary chlorophyll degradation products. The acid extractable chlorophyll degradation products are identified in sediment trap samples, and evidence is presented for the occurrence of the solvent extractable macromolecular chlorophyll degradation products in sediment trap samples. Using data from sediment traps, sediments, and the literature, a mass balance of chlorophyll flux, degradation, and accumulation in the Black Sea is presented. In the photic zone, chlorophyll degradation products are either destroyed by photo-oxidation and grazing, or they are transported into the anoxic water column in large, rapidly sinking particles. Once the chlorophyll degradation products have reached the anoxic water column, they survive to be deposited in the underlying sediments. As a comparison, 25 times more total organic carbon reaches the anoxic water column than does total phorbin, but 75% of total organic carbon which reaches the anoxic water column is degraded, either in the anoxic water column or in the very surface sediments. Though a larger percentage of total organic carbon passes out of the photic zone, the phorbin macrocycle appears to be more stable under anoxic conditions than is total organic carbon. The chlorophyll which can be detected below the chemocline of the Black Sea in the form of chlorophyll degradation products will survive to be deposited in surface sediments. Once in sediments, chlorophyll degradation products are found in four different reservoirs: phorbin steryl esters, free phorbins, solvent extractable macromolecular chlorophyll degradation products, and acid extractable chlorophyll degradation products. Evidence for the occurrence of porphyrins in surface Black Sea sediments is also presented. The distribution of chlorophyll degradation products in Unit I Black Sea sediments varies greatly with sediment depth. The concentration of total phorbin generally increases with increasing burial depth, but the concentrations of the individual chlorophyll degradation products vary in a manner which is both dissimilar to total phorbin and to each other. No parent/daughter relationships for the chlorophyll degradation products are indicated by the data. The distribution of sterols esterified to pyropheophorbide-a changes with sediment depth with the largest qualitative changes occurring in strata where the total phorbin concentration shows the largest quantitative changes. It is suggested that the variations seen in the esterified sterols are related to changes in the phytoplankton community over time. From the presented data, it is also suggested that total phorbin concentration, normalized to total organic carbon, in Black Sea Unit I sediments is related to paleoprimary production. Several conclusions are drawn from the work presented in this thesis. There is approximately 3 times more chlorophyll-derived phorbin in Black Sea sediments than can be accounted for when considering only individual pheopigments, and therefore the sedimentary degradation of chlorophyll is much more complex than previously thought. In the anoxic sediments of the Black Sea, the total phorbin distribution can be accounted for with organically extractable high molecular weight degradation products, pyropheophorbide steryl esters, pheopigments, and acid extractable chlorophyll degradation products. The sterol distribution in the pyropheophorbide steryl esters may preserve the sterol distribution in surface waters as synthesized by the phytoplankton, and pyropheophorbide steryl esters are preserved in sediments over the long term.

Description: The work in this thesis was funded by grants from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Ocean Ventures Fund and the National Science Foundation contract numbers OCE88-14398, OCE90-17626, and OCE92-01178.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2009

Description: Marine mammal whistle calls present an attractive medium for covert underwater communications. High quality models of the whistle calls are needed in order to synthesize natural-sounding whistles with embedded information. Since the whistle calls are composed of frequency modulated harmonic tones, they are best modeled as a weighted superposition of harmonically related sinusoids. Previous research with bottlenose dolphin whistle calls has produced synthetic whistles that sound too “clean” for use in a covert communications system. Due to the sensitivity of the human auditory system, watermarking schemes that slightly modify the fundamental frequency contour have good potential for producing natural-sounding whistles embedded with retrievable watermarks. Structured total least squares is used with linear prediction analysis to track the time-varying fundamental frequency and harmonic amplitude contours throughout a whistle call. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate the capability to accurately model bottlenose dolphin whistle calls and retrieve embedded information from watermarked synthetic whistle calls. Different fundamental frequency watermarking schemes are proposed based on their ability to produce natural sounding synthetic whistles and yield suitable watermark detection and retrieval.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2002

Description: Sound propagation in shallow water is highly dependent on the interaction of the sound field with the bottom. In order to fully understand this problem, it is necessary to obtain reliable estimates of bottom geoacoustic properties that can be used in acoustic propagation codes. In this thesis, perturbative inversion methods and exact inverse methods are discussed as a means for inferring geoacoustic properties of the bottom. For each of these methods, the input data to the inversion is the horizontal wavenumber spectrum of a point-source acoustic field. The main thrust of the thesis work concerns extracting horizontal wavenumber content for fully three-dimensionally varying waveguide environments. In this context, a high-resolution autoregressive (AR) spectral estimator was applied to determine wavenumber content for short aperture data. As part of this work, the AR estimator was examined for its ability to detect discrete wavenumbers in the presence of noise and also to resolve closely spaced wavenumbers for short aperture data. As part of a geoacoustic inversion workshop, the estimator was applied to extract horizontal wavenumber content for synthetic pressure field data with range-varying geoacoustic properties in the sediment. The resulting wavenumber content was used as input data to a perturbative inverse algorithm to determine the sound speed profile in the sediment. It was shown using the high-resolution wavenumber estimator that both the shape and location of the range-variability in the sediment could be determined. The estimator was also applied to determine wavenumbers for synthetic data where the water column sound speed contained temporal variations due to the presence of internal waves. It was shown that reliable estimates of horizontal wavenumbers could be obtained that are consistent with the boundary conditions of the waveguide. The Modal Mapping Experiment (MOMAX), an experimental method for measuring the full spatial variability of a propagating sound field and its corresponding modal content in two-dimensions, is also discussed. The AR estimator is applied to extract modal content from the real data and interpreted with respect to source/receiver motion and geometry. For a moving source, it is shown that the wavenumber content is Doppler shifted. A method is then described that allows the direct measure of modal group velocities from Doppler shifted wavenumber spectra. Finally, numerical studies are presented addressing the practical issues associated with using MOMAX type data in the exact inversion method of Gelfand-Levitan.

Description: I am especially grateful to ONR for providing the funding for me to do this work.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2002

Description: Predictions of deposition rate are integral to the transport of many constituents including contaminants, organic matter, and larvae. Review of the literature demonstrates a general appreciation for the potential control of deposition by bed roughness, but no direct tests involving flat sediment beds. Understanding the mechanisms at work for flat sediment beds would provide the basis for exploring more complicated bed conditions and the incorporation of other transport processes, such as bioturbation and bedload transport. Generally, fine particle deposition rates are assumed to be equivalent to the suspension settling velocity, therefore, deposition rates in excess of settling are considered enhanced. Flume observations of deposition were made using treatments that covered a wide range of flow, particle, and bed conditions. Specific treatments demonstrated large enhancements (up to eight times settling). Delivery of particles to the interface is important, but models based on delivery alone failed to predict the observed enhancement. This necessitated the development of a new model based on a balance between delivery and filtration in the bed. Interfacial diffusion was chosen as a model for particle delivery. Filtration of particles by the bed is a useful framework for retention, but the shear in the interstitial flow may introduce additional factors not included in traditional filtration experiments. The model performed well in prediction of flow conditions, but there remained a discrepancy between predictions and observed deposition rate, especially for treatments with significant enhancement. Fluid flow predictions by the model,; such as slip at the sediment water interface and fluid penetration into the sediment, appeared to be supported by flume experiments. Therefore, failure to predict the magnitude of enhancement was attributed to far greater filtration efficiencies for the sediment water interface than those measured in sediment columns. Emerging techniques to directly measure fluid and particle motion at the interface could reveal these mechanisms. The observation of enhanced deposition to flat sediment beds reinforces the importance of permeable sediments to the mediation of transport from the water column to the sediment bed.

Description: The Education Office at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution coordinated and provided funding for much of my time here. Additional support has been provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Ocean Research (CICOR), and the Offce of Naval Research under grant numbers N00014-97-1-0556 (STRATAFORM Plume Study Moored Observations: Data Analysis and Modeling), N00014-96-1-0953 (Graduate Student Training in Engineering: Instrumenting the Continental Shelf Wave Bottom Boundary Layer), and N00014-94-1-0713 (Coupled Biological, Geological and Hydrodynamical Processes Associated with Fine-Particle Transport & Accumulation in the Coastal Ocean).

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution December 2001

Description: I used direct measurements of nitrogen gas (N2) fluxes and a 15N stable isotope tracer to determine the contribution of denitrification to salt marsh sediment N cycling. Denitrification in salt marsh tidal creekbottoms is a major sink for groundwater nitrate of terrestrial origin. I studied creekbottom denitrification by direct measurements of N2 fluxes in closed chambers against a low-N2 background. I undertook experiments and simulation modeling of sediment N2 fluxes in closed chambers to optimize the key experimental parameters of this approach. Denitrification in these sediments was driven by the degradation of labile organic matter pools which are depleted during long incubations. Sediment thickness was the most important parameter controlling the required incubation time. Errors of up to 13% with gas headspaces and 80% with water headspaces resulted from headspace N2 accumulation and the resulting collapse of the sediment-water diffusion gradient. These errors could be eliminated by using headspaces of sufficient thickness. Headspace flushing to reduce ammonium accumulation did not affect denitrification rates, but caused transient disturbance of N2 flux rates. Direct measurements of O2, CO2, N2, and inorganic N fluxes from the sediments of a salt marsh tidal creek were made in order to examine the interaction of denitrification with the carbon, oxygen, and N cycles. Organic carbon concentration and lability were the primary controls on metabolic rates. CO2/N flux ratios averaged 6.1, indicating respiration driven by algal biomass. Allochthonous denitrification accounted for 39% of total sediment denitrification (2.7 mol N m-2 yr-I). 46% of remineraIized ammonium was denitrified, while the contribution of autochthonous denitrification to O2 and CO2 fluxes was 18% and 10%, respectively. A 15N-ammonium tracer was used to study competition between plants and nitrifying bacteria for remineralized ammonium. In undisturbed sediments of Spartina alterniflora, plant uptake out-competed nitrification-denitrification, with plant uptake accounting for 66% of remineralized ammonium during the growing season. Under N fertilization (15.5 mol m-2 yr-1), both plant N uptake and denitrification increased, but denitrification dominated, accounting for 72% of the available N. When plant uptake was hydrologically suppressed, nitrification-denitrification was stimulated by the excess N, shifting the competitive balance toward denitrification.

Description: Financial support came through the generosity of the Education Department at WHOI, the Coastal Systems Group at the School for Marine Science and Technology, University of Massachusetts, the Reinhart Coastal Research Center, and the Biology Department at WHOI.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution August 1982

Description: In an effort to understand the more general mechanisms and rates of pre-depositional reactions that transform organic matter, the types and relevant time scales of reactions that transform carotenoid pigments in the oceanic water column were studied. Suspended particulate matter collected from surface waters of Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts and the Peru upwelling system has a carotenoid distribution reflecting the phytoplanktonic source of the material. The carotenoid distribution of sediment trap samples collected in these same areas was dominated by transformation products. Fucoxanthin, the primary carotenoid of marine diatoms, typically constituted 77-100% of the total fucopigments in suspended particulate material. In sediment trap samples this pigment constituted only 4-85% of the total. The remaining 15-96% of the pigments consisted of the fucoxanthin transformations products: free alcohols (2-94%), dehydrates (0-6%), and opened epoxides (0-19%). Preliminary results suggest that carotenoid esters are hydrolyzed to free alcohols at a rate determined by the turnover of primary productivity. The dehydrated and epoxide opened intermediates of fucoxanthin represent products of transformation reactions that operate over much longer time scales (0.1-10 yrs). Dehydration and epoxide opening are not significant water column transformations, but are important in surface sediments.

Description: This research was supported by the Ocean Sciences Section, National Science Foundation grants OCE 79-25352 and OCE 81-18436, the Office of Naval Research Contract N00014-74-Co-262NR 083-004, the Woods Hole Coastal Research Center project 25 000067 04, and a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Student Fellowship.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May 1980

Description: This study of particulate matter in the water column and the underlying surface sediments verifies the occurrence of local, present-day resuspension in the deep sea. The location of the major portion of this work was the South Iceland Rise, a region influenced by the flow of Norwegian Sea Overflow Water. Measured current velocities exceeded 20 cm/sec in the axis of the bottom current for the duration of the deployments, approximately two weeks. Particulate matter was sampled with Niskin bottles, to obtain the standing crop of suspended matter and with sediment traps, to obtain the material in flux through the water column. Box cores were taken to obtain surface sediment samples for comparison with the trap samples. Suspended particulate matter (SPM) and light-scattering studies demonstrate that in the Iceland Rise area the correlation of the L-DGO nephelometer to concentration of SPM differs between clear water and the nepheloid layer. Correlations of light scattering to SPM concentration also differ regionally, but for predicting concentration from light scattering, regression lines at two locations are indistinguishable. Particle size distributions have lower variance in the nepheloid layer than those in clear water which have roughly equal volumes of material in logarithmically increasing size grades from 1-20 μm. Apparent density differences between SPM in clear water and the nepheloid layer are not distinguishable in the Iceland Rise study; apparent densities increase in the nepheloid layer in the western North Atlantic. An apparent density of 1.1 g/cm3 adequately separates clear water from nepheloid layer samples in this region. Compositional variations seen between clear water and the nepheloid layer include a decrease in small coccoliths and an increase in clays and mineral matter. These compositional variations are more dramatic in the western North Atlantic region, due to dissolution of carbonate at the seafloor, later resuspended into the nepheloid layer. Sedimentological evidence of resuspension and redistribution of material are: 1) presence of sediment drifts throughout the Iceland Basin; 2) occurrence of coarse, glacial age sediments beneath the axis of the bottom current; and 3) differences in mineralogy, carbonate and organic carbon contents between surface sediments beneath the bottom current and those in a channel. A comparison of the vertical flux of material measured by sediment traps at 500 meters above bottom (mab) with the accumulation rate in cores, shows that the present-day surface input is an order of magnitude smaller than the accumulation rate. This observation suggests transport of material into some sections of the region by bottom currents or by turbidity currents. The horizontal flux of particulate matter into and out of the region by the bottom current is 100 kg/sec. This material may contribute to the formation of Gardar sediment drift downstream. The trends in % CaC03 and % organic carbon through the water column and in the surface sediments suggest that dissolution of carbonate and decomposition and consumption of organic carbon occurs primarily at the seafloor. These data also suggest preferential preservation at channel stations and/or preferential erosion beneath the bottom current. A comparison of sediment-trap samples with box-core surface samples further supports present-day resuspension. Benthic foraminifera, iron-oxidicoated planktonic foraminifera and the glacial, subpolar planktonic foraminifera (Neogloboquadrina pachyderma (sinistral)) in traps at 10,100 and a few specimens at 500 mab, provide conclusive evidence for local resuspension. The coarse fraction (〉125 μm) of the sediment trap material collected at 10 mab comprises 21-34% of the samples Calculations indicate that this material is locally derived (few kilometers) resuspended material.

Description: This work was financially supported by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, ONR through contracts N00014-79-C-00-7l NR 083-004, N00014-74-C0262 NR 083-004, and N00014-75-C-029l and ERDA through contracts 13-7923 and 13-2559.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2007

Description: This thesis covers a comprehensive analysis of long-range, deep-ocean, low-frequency, sound propagation experimental results obtained from the North Pacific Ocean. The statistics of acoustic fields after propagation through internal-wave-induced sound-speed fluctuations are explored experimentally and theoretically. The thesis starts with the investigation of the North Pacific Acoustic Laboratory 98-99 data by exploring the space-time scales of ocean sound speed variability and the contributions from different frequency bands. The validity of the Garret & Munk internal-wave model is checked in the upper ocean of the eastern North Pacific. All these results impose hard bounds on the strength and characteristic scales of sound speed fluctuations one might expect in this region of the North Pacific for both internal-wave band fluctuations and mesoscale band fluctuations. The thesis then presents a detailed analysis of the low frequency, broadband sound arrivals obtained in the North Pacific Ocean. The observed acoustic variability is compared with acoustic predictions based on the weak fluctuation theory of Rytov, and direct parabolic equation Monte Carlo simulations. The comparisons show that a resonance condition exists between the local acoustic ray and the internal wave field such that only the internal-waves whose crests are parallel to the local ray path will contribute to acoustic scattering: This effect leads to an important filtering of the acoustic spectra relative to the internal-wave spectra. We believe that this is the first observational evidence for the acoustic ray and internal wave resonance. Finally, the thesis examined the evolution with distance, of the acoustic arrival pattern of the off-axis sound source transmissions in the Long-range Ocean Acoustic Propagation EXperiment. The observations of mean intensity time-fronts are compared to the deterministic ray, parabolic equation (with/without internal waves) and (one-way coupled) normal mode calculations. It is found the diffraction effect is dominant in the shorter-range transmission. In the longer range, the (internal wave) scattering effect smears the energy in both the spatial and temporal scales and thus has a dominant role in the finale region.

Description: The funding that made this research possible came from the Office of Naval Research, and the WHOI Academic Programs Office.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2003

Description: The cosmogenic radionuclide 10Be is a unique tracer of shallow sediment subduction in volcanic arcs. The range in 10Be enrichment in the Central American Volcanic Arc between Guatemala and Costa Rica is not controlled by variations in 10Be concentrations in subducting sediment seaward of the Middle America Trench. Sedimentary 10Be is correlated negatively with 143Nd/144Nd, illustrating that 10Be concentrations varied both between and within cores due to mixing between terrigenous clay and volcanic ash endmember components. This mixing behavior was determined to be a function of grain size controls on 10Be concentrations. A negative correlation of bulk sedimentary 10Be concentrations with median grain size and a positive correlation with the proportion of the sediment grains that were 〈32 μm in diameter demonstrated that high concentrations of 10Be in fine-grained, terrigenous sediments were diluted by larger grained volcanogenic material. The sharp decrease in 10Be enrichment in the Central American Volcanic Arc between southeastern Nicaragua and northwestern Costa Rica correlates with changes in fault structure in the subducting Cocos plate. Offshore of Nicaragua, extensional faults associated with plate bending have throw equal to or greater than the overlying subducting sediment thickness. These faults enable efficient subduction of the entire sediment package by preventing relocation of the décollement within the downgoing sediments. Offshore of Costa Rica, the reduction of fault relief results in basement faults that do not penetrate the overlying sediment. A conceptual model is proposed in which the absence of significant basement roughness allows the décollement to descend into the subducting sediment column, leading to subsequent underplating and therefore removal of the bulk of the sediment layer that contains 10Be. Basement fault relief was linearly related to plate curvature and trench depth. The systematic shoaling of the plate from southeastern Nicaragua to northwestern Costa Rica is not explained by changes in plate age for this region. Instead, it is hypothesized that the flexural shape of the plate offshore of southeastern Nicaragua and northwestern Costa Rica represents a lateral response to a buoyant load caused by the thick crust and elevated thermal regime in the Cocos plate offshore of southeastern Costa Rica.

Description: Funding for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the WHOI Ocean Ventures Fund, the WHOI Deep Ocean Institute Graduate Fellowship, and Geological Society of America Graduate Research Grant #7179-02.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2003

Description: This thesis examines the evolution of a mud-dominated coastal sedimentary system on multiple time scales. Fine-grained systems exhibit different properties and behavior from sandy coasts, and have received relatively little research attention to date. Evidence is presented for shoreline accretion under energetic conditions associated with storms and winter cold fronts. The identification of energetic events as agents of coastal accretion stands in contrast to the traditional assumption that low-energy conditions are required for deposition of fine-grained sediment. Mudflat accretion is proposed to depend upon the presence of an unconsolidated mud sea floor immediately offshore, proximity to a fluvial sediment source, onshore winds, which generate waves that resuspend sediment and advect it shoreward, and a low tidal range. This study constrains the present influence of the Atchafalaya River on stratigraphic evolution of the inner continental shelf in western Louisiana. Sedimentary and acoustic data are used to identify the western limit of the distal Atchafalaya prodelta and to estimate the proportion of Atchafalaya River sediment that accumulates on the inner shelf seaward of Louisiana's chenier plain coast. The results demonstrate a link between sedimentary facies distribution on the inner shelf and patterns of accretion and shoreline retreat on the chenier plain coast.

Description: Among my funding sources was a two-year fellowship from the Clare Booth Luce Foundation. I have received research grants from the Geological Society of America Foundation (Grant 6873-01) and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (Kenneth H. Crandall Memorial grant).

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2003

Description: A novel distributed underwater acoustic networking (UAN) protocol suitable for ad-hoc deployments of both stationary and mobile nodes dispersed across a relatively wide coverage area is presented. Nodes are dynamically clustered in a distributed manner based on the estimated position of one-hop neighbor nodes within a shallow water environment. The spatial dynamic cellular clustering scheme allows scalable communication resource allocation and channel reuse similar in design to land-based cellular architectures, except devoid of the need for a centralized controlling infrastructure. Simulation results demonstrate that relatively high degrees of interference immunity, network connectivity, and network stability can be achieved despite the severe limitations of the underwater acoustic channel.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2002

Description: This thesis investigates the complexities of acoustic scattering by finite bodies in general and by fish in particular through the development of an advanced acoustic scattering model and detailed laboratory acoustic measurements. A general acoustic scattering model is developed that is accurate and numerically effcient for a wide range of frequencies, angles of orientation, irregular axisymmetric shapes and boundary conditions. The model presented is an extension of a two-dimensional conformal mapping approach to scattering by irregular, finite-length bodies of revolution. An extensive series of broadband acoustic backscattering measurements has been conducted involving alewife fish (Alosa pseudoharengus), which are morphologically similar to the Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus). A greater-than-octave bandwidth (40-95 kHz), shaped, linearly swept, frequency modulated signal was used to insonify live, adult alewife that were tethered while being rotated in 1-degree increments over all angles of orientation in two planes of rotation (lateral and dorsal/ventral). Spectral analysis correlates frequency dependencies to morphology and orientation. Pulse compression processing temporally resolves multiple returns from each individual which show good correlation with size and orientation, and demonstrate that there exists more than one significant scattering feature in the animaL. Imaging technologies used to exactly measure the morphology of the scattering features of fish include very highresolution Phase Contrast X-rays (PCX) and Computerized Tomography (CT) scans, which are used for morphological evaluation and incorporation into the scattering modeL. Studies such as this one, which combine scattering models with high-resolution morphological information and high-quality laboratory data, are crucial to the quantitative use of acoustics in the ocean.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution April 1983

Description: Ocean acoustic tomography was proposed in 1978 by Munk and Wunsch as a possible technique for monitoring the evolution of temperature, density, and current fields over large regions. In 1981, the Ocean Tomography Group deployed four 224 Hz acoustic sources and five receivers in an array which fit within a box 300 km. on a side centered on 26°N, 70°W (southwest of Bermuda). The experiment was intended both to demonstrate the practicality of tomography as an observation tool and to extend the understanding of mesoscale evolution in the low-energy region far from the strong Gulf Stream recirculation. The propagation of 224 Hz sound energy in the ocean can be described as a set of rays traveling from source to receiver, with each ray taking a different path through the ocean in a vertical plane connecting the source and receiver. The sources transmitted a phase-coded signal which was processed at the receiver to produce a pulse at the time of arrival of the signal. Rays can be distinguished by their different pulse travel times, and these travel times change in response to variations in sound speed and current in the ocean through which the rays passed. In order to reconstruct the ocean variations from the observed travel time changes, it is necessary to specify models for both the variations and their effect on the travel times. The dependence of travel time on the oceanic sound speed and current fields can be calculated using ray paths traced by computer. The vertical structure of the sound speed and current fields in the ocean were modelled as a combination of Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOFs) from MODE. The horizontal structure was continuous, but was constrained to have a gaussian covariance with a 100 km. e- folding scale. The resulting estimator closely resembles objective mapping as used in meteorology and physical oceanography. The tomographic system has at present only been used to estimate sound speed structure for comparison with the traditional measurements, especially the first two NOAA CTD surveys, but the method provides means for estimating density, temperature or velocity fields, and these will be produced in the future. The sound speed estimates made using the tomographic system match the traditional measurements to within the associated error bars, and there are several possibilities for improving the signal to noise ratio of the data. Given high-precision data, tomographic systems can resolve ocean structures at small scales, such as in the Gulf Stream, or at large scales, over entire ocean basins. Work is in progress to evaluate the usefulness of tomography as an observation tool in these applications.

Description: My support for the first 3 years came from an NSF graduate fellowship, and I was then supported as a research assistant by NSF Grant OCE-8017791.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution November 1981

Description: Radiolarians which settle through the oceanic water column were recovered from three stations (western Tropical Atlantic-Station E, central Tropical Pacific-Pi and Panama Basin-PB) using PARLUX sediment traps in moored arrays at several depths. The taxonomic diversities of the radiolarian assemblages in the sediment traps were very high. A total of 420 taxa, including 23 newly identified taxa, were found at the three stations; of these, 208 taxa were found at station E. The polycystine radiolarians generally reach the sea floor with little change in abundance or species composition, although slight skeletal dissolution occurs throughout their descent. The phaeodarian radiolarians, on the other hand, are largely dissolved within the water column; only a few species reach the sea-floor and these dissolve rapidly at the sediment-water interface. Most radiolarian skeletons sink as individuals through deep water columns without being incorporated into large biogenic aggregates. Because significant numbers of nassellarian and phaeodarian species are deep-water dwelling forms the diversity index of radiolarians increases with increasing depth in the mesopelagic zone. The vertical flux of the total radiolarians arriving at the trap depths (in x 103 individuals/m2/day) ranged from 16-24 (E), 0.6-17 (Pl), and 29-53 (PB). Of these on the average 25% and 69% of the total radiolarian flux is transported by Spumellaria and Nassellaria, respectively, while 5% is carried by Phaeodaria. The measured Si02 content of the skeletons averaged 91, 98 and 71% of measured weight for Spumellaria, Nassellaria and Phaeodaria, respectively. The supply of radiolarian silica (mg Si02/m2/day) to each trap depth ranged from 2.5-4.0 (E), 0.9-3.2 (Pl), and 5.7-10.4 (PB). The Radiolaria appear to be a significantly large portion of the Si02 flux in 〉63 pm size fraction and thus play an important role in the silica cycle. When the radiolarian fluxes at the three Stations are compared with Holocene radiolarian accumulation rates in the same areas it became apparent that several percent or less of the fluxes are preserved in the sediments in all cases and the rest is dissolved on the sea-floor. Estimated excess Si which is derived from Si02 dissolution on the sea-floor is fairly small relative to advective Si in the western North Atlantic and thus it appears to be insignificant to show any deviation in a simple mixing curve of deep water masses. Weight, length, width, projected area and volume of 58 radiolarian taxa were measured. The density contrast of radiolarians, relative to seawater, generally falls between 0.01 and 0.5 g/cm3. The sinking speed of 55 radiolarian taxa, measured in the laboratory at 3°C, ranged from 13 to 416 m/day. Despite the wide variety of morphology between the species, sinking speeds were best correlated with weight/shell among all the possible combinations of the examined variables. The estimated residence times of these taxa in the 5 km pelagic water column ranged from 2 weeks to 14 months. Large phaeodarians reached the water-sediment interface relatively quickly and ultimately dissolved on the sea floor. Small-sized taxa dissolved en route during sinking. The standing stock of 26 examined abundant taxa is on the order of 1 to 100 shells/m3. Total radiolarian standing stock ranges from about 450 shells/m3 at Stations Pl and E to 1200 shells/m3 at Station PB. The rate of production of total Radiolaria is calculated to be 77 to 225 shells/m3 /day. The turnover time for these species ranges from several days to one month depending on the species and the assumption of the depth interval used for the estimation.

Description: This thesis work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Submarine Geology and Geophysics Program, Grant OCE80-l9386 and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Education Office.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2003

Description: Prevailing wisdom holds that the vertical distribution of molybdenum (Mo) in the open ocean is conservative, despite Mo's important biological role and association with Mn oxides and anoxic sediments. Mo is used in both nitrogenase, the enzyme responsible for Nz fixation, and nitrate reductase, which catalyzes assimilatory and dissimilatory nitrate reduction. Laboratory culture work on two Nz fixing marine cyanobacteria, Trichodesmium and Crocosphaera, and a marine facultative denitrifier, Marinobacter hydrocarbanoclasticus, showed that Mo cell quotas in these organisms were positively correlated with Mo-containing enzyme activity. Mo concentrations in Crocosphaera dropped almost to blank levels when not fixing Nz suggesting daily synthesis and destruction of the entire nitrogenase enzyme and release of Mo. Trichodesmium cultues, however, retained a pool of cellular Mo even when not fixing Nz. Colonies of Trichodesmium collected in the field have Mo:C tenfold higher than seen in culture, these Mo:C ratios were reflected in SPM samples from the same region. Fe:C ratios for Trichodesmium were between 12-160 μmol:mol in field and cultured samples. The Fe:C ratio of Crocosphaera was established to be 15.8±11:3 under Nz fixing conditions. Mo cellular concentrations in cultured organisms were too small to significantly influence dissolved Mo distributions, but may slightly affect Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) distributions. Mean SPM Mo:C ratios were slightly elevated in regions of Nz fixation and denitrification. A high precision (±0.5%) isotope dilution ICP-MS method for measuring Mo was developed to re-evaluate the marine distribution of Mo in the dissolved and particulate phase. Mn oxides were not found to significantly influence either the dissolved or SPM Mo distribution. Dissolved Mo profiles from the Sargasso and Arabian Sea were conservative. However, dissolved Mo profiles from the Eastern Tropical Pacific showed both depletion and enrichment of dissolved Mo possibly associated with interaction of Mo with coastal sediments. Dissolved Mo profiles in several California Borderland Basins showed 1-2 nM Mo depletions below sill depth. A more focused study of water column response to sediment fluxes using the high precision Mo analyses is necessary to determine whether these phenomena are related.

Description: This work was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (#OCE-0096453) and the WHOI Academic Programs Ocean Ventures Fund. I have also been supported through WHOI by a NSF coastal traineeship #DGE-9454129, by the US GS Cooperative Agreement #USGS-OOHQAG001 and by WHOI Academic Programs.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Electrical Engineer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology June 1979

Description: For a spherical acoustic wave incident on a horizontally stratified ocean bottom, the reflected pressure field and the plane-wave reflection coefficient are related through a two-dimensional spatial-wavenumber Fourier transform. An algorithm is proposed to evaluate the plane-wave reflection coefficient from the bottom reflected field as a function of angle of incidencè. The algorithm is based on the "Projection-Slice" theorem associated with the two-dimensional Fourier transform. This technique is implemented to evaluate the plane-wave reflection coefficient for a perfectly reflecting ocean bottom and for an isovelocity-low speed ocean bottom model.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2008.

Description: In this thesis, I provide quantitative descriptions of toothed whale echolocation and foraging behavior, including assessment of the effects of noise on foraging behavior and the potential influence of ocean acoustic propagation conditions on biosonar detection ranges and whale noise exposure. In addition to presenting some novel basic science findings, the case studies presented in this thesis have implications for future work and for management. In Chapter 2, I describe the application of a modified version of the Dtag to studies of harbor porpoise echolocation behavior. The study results indicate how porpoises vary the rate and level of their echolocation clicks during prey capture events; detail the differences in echolocation behavior between different animals and in response to differences in prey fish; and show that, unlike bats, porpoises continue their echolocation buzz after the moment of prey capture. Chapters 3-4 provide case studies that emphasize the importance of applying realistic models of ocean acoustic propagation in marine mammal studies. These chapters illustrate that, although using geometric spreading approximations to predict communication/target detection ranges or noise exposure levels is appropriate in some cases, it can result in large errors in other cases, particularly in situations where refraction in the water column or multi-path acoustic propagation are significant. Finally, in Chapter 5, I describe two methods for statistical analysis of whale behavior data, the rotation test and a semi-Markov chain model. I apply those methods to test for changes in sperm whale foraging behavior in response to airgun noise exposure. Test results indicate that, despite the low-level exposures experienced by the whales in the study, some (but not all) of them reduced their buzz production rates and altered other foraging behavior parameters in response to the airgun exposure.

Description: Work presented in this thesis was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the WHOI Ocean Life Institute (Grant Numbers 32031300 and 25051351), the Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Department of the Interior Minerals Management Service (Cooperative Agreement Numbers 1435-01-02-CA-85186 and NA87RJ0445; WHOI Grant Number 15205601), the Industry Research Funding Coalition, and the WHOI/MIT Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science & Engineering (including a Fye Teaching Fellowship).

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution January 1983

Description: Isotope studies of nitrogen and carbon were undertaken to investigate the fate of particulate organic matter (POM) during its residence in the water column and after deposition on the seafloor. The processes focused on were water-column transformations and sedimentary diagenesis. Sampling sites were chosen to provide POM subject to different specific mineralization processes (nitrification, denitrification, and sulfate reduction), different lengths of water column (duration of the mineralization process), and differences in the size of the organic-matter flux. The δl5N and δ13C of plankton, POM, and sediments from several oceanic sites were related to biological and hydrographic processes identified from nutrient, temperature, and salinity profiles. This was done to determine what effect these processes have on the δ15N of POM. Four stations were studied in the upwelling area off the coast of Peru and one station was studied in the Gulf of Maine. Important factors controlling the δ15N of plankton appear to be the concentration and δl5N of nitrate in the surface waters, and the relative zooplankton and phytoplankton abundances. Plankton from the Peru Upwelling Area are enriched in 15N as compared to plankton from other parts of the world's oceans where denitrification is absent. This enrichment may be due to the assimilation of 15N-enriched nitrate, produced by the selective reduction of 14N during denitrification. Zooplankton are 3 to 4% enriched in 15N as compared with phytoplankton. Production of 14N -enriched fecal pellets is suggested as a mechanism for this trophic enrichment. In the surface waters, the δl5N of POM is similar to that of plankton. In the Peru Upwelling Area, the δ15N of POM from the oxygen-deficient waters decreases with increasing depth. In the Gulf of Maine, below the euphotic zone in the oxic deep waters, the δ15N of POM increases with increasing depth. The difference in isotopic alteration may be due to the effect of different redox conditions on the mechanism and sequence by which specific organic nitrogen compounds, variably enriched in 15M, undergo degradation. Furthermore, bacterial growth on nitrogen-poor particles in the deep waters of the Peru Upwelling Area may contribute to the low δ15N of POM. In contrast to the large range in δ15N (-2 to +17%) of the POM, the range of δ15N in the sediments is small (+5 to +9%). Within a core, the average variation in δ15N was only 1.8%. Temporal variability in the δ15N of sedimenting POM and benthic activity appear to be important in determining the δ15N of the sediments. The large changes in POM concentration and isotope content at the sediment/water interface as compared with the more constant values found down-core, suggest that processes occuring at the sediment/water interface are critical, although bioturbation may also be important in determining the δ15N of oxic sediments. If diagenesis causes a significant loss of organic matter, profiles of organic carbon and nitrogen contents should show decreases with increasing depth and C/N ratios should increase with increasing depth (Reimers, 1981). Since none of the sedimentary profiles exhibited such trends, it is concluded that diagenesis was insufficient to erase the percent carbon, nitrogen and C/N ratio signatures generated by the POM flux and alterations at the sediment/water interface. Temporal variability in the δ15N of bottom-water POM may be caused by changes in deep-water currents which transport POM horizontally and to changes in bacterial and possibly other biological activity in the water column. This thesis work suggests that δ15N may be a useful tool in studying the geochemistry of POM in the marine environment. In addition, this research has shown that interpretation of the sedimentary 15N record must include consideration of isotopic alteration associated with bacterial remineralization of POM and benthic activity.

Description: Funds for this research were provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography, the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OCE-8024442, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through the Center for Coastal Research of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2004

Description: Relatively little is known about the role of eddies in controlling subduction in the eastern half of the subtropical gyre. Here, a new tool to study the eastern North Atlantic Ocean is created by combining a regional, eddy-resolving numerical model with observations to produce a state estimate of the ocean circulation. The estimate is a synthesis of a variety of in-situ observations from the Subduction Experiment, TOPEX/POSEIDON altimetry, and the MIT General Circulation Model. A novel aspect of this work is the search for an initial eddy field and eddy-scale open boundary conditions by the use of an adjoint model. The adjoint model for this region of the ocean is stable and yields useful information despite concerns about the chaotic nature of eddy-resolving models. The method is successful because the dynamics are only weakly nonlinear in the eastern region of the subtropical gyre. Therefore, no fundamental obstacle exists to constraining the model to both the large scale circulation and the eddy scale in this region of the ocean. Individual eddy trajectories can also be determined. The state estimate is consistent with observations, self-consistent with the equations of motion, and it explicitly resolves eddy-scale motions with a 1/6º grid. Therefore, subduction rates, volume budgets, and buoyancy budgets are readily diagnosed in a physically interpretable context. Estimates of eddy subduction for the eastern subtropical gyre of the North Atlantic are larger than previously calculated from parameterizations in coarse-resolution models. Eddies contribute up to 40 m/yr of subduction locally. Furthermore, eddy subduction rates have typical magnitudes of 15% of the total subduction rate. To evaluate the net effect of eddies on an individual density class, volume budgets are diagnosed. Eddies contribute as much as 1 Sv to diapycnal flux, and hence subduction, in the density range 25.5 〈 σ 〈 26.5. Eddies have a integrated impact which is sizable relative to the 2.5 Sv of diapycnal flux by the mean circulation. A combination of Eulerian and isopycnal maps suggest that the North Equatorial Current and the Azores Current are the geographical centers of eddy subduction. The findings of this thesis imply that the inability to resolve or accurately parameterize eddy subduction in climate models would lead to an accumulation of error in the structure of the main thermocline, even in the eastern subtropical gyre, which is a region of comparatively weak eddy motions.

Description: This thesis has received support through grants, fellowships, and computer allocations. A NASA Earth System Science Fellowship has been my primary source of funding. In addition, computer time at the University of Texas has been provided by a NPACI PRAC grant, "State Estimates of the Time-Evolving Three-dimensional Ocean Circulation with Eddy Resolution." Grant #6857100 through CalTech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as Grant #6892952 through NASA-Goddard Flight Center for the synthesis of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2008

Description: Oceanographic applications of robotics are as varied as the undersea environment itself. As underwater robotics moves toward the study of dynamic processes with multiple vehicles, there is an increasing need to distill large volumes of data from underwater vehicles and deliver it quickly to human operators. While tethered robots are able to communicate data to surface observers instantly, communicating discoveries is more difficult for untethered vehicles. The ocean imposes severe limitations on wireless communications; light is quickly absorbed by seawater, and tradeoffs between frequency, bitrate and environmental effects result in data rates for acoustic modems that are routinely as low as tens of bits per second. These data rates usually limit telemetry to state and health information, to the exclusion of mission-specific science data. In this thesis, I present a system designed for communicating and presenting science telemetry from untethered underwater vehicles to surface observers. The system's goals are threefold: to aid human operators in understanding oceanographic processes, to enable human operators to play a role in adaptively responding to mission-specific data, and to accelerate mission planning from one vehicle dive to the next. The system uses standard lossy compression techniques to lower required data rates to those supported by commercially available acoustic modems (O(10)-O(100) bits per second). As part of the system, a method for compressing time-series science data based upon the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is explained, a number of low-bitrate image compression techniques are compared, and a novel user interface for reviewing transmitted telemetry is presented. Each component is motivated by science data from a variety of actual Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) missions performed in the last year.

Description: National Science Foundation Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging (CenSSIS ERC)

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2004

Description: Paleoclimate records with sufficient length and temporal resolution to study the occurrence and causal mechanisms of abrupt climate change are exceedingly rare. Rapidly deposited ocean sediments provide the best archive for studying these events through geologic time, but such sites in the open ocean are limited to sediment drift deposits such as the Bermuda Rise in the northwest Atlantic. Using multiple climate proxies in a single core is becoming more common in high-resolution paleoclimate investigations, but a major potential concern for this approach arises from the possibility that the fine fraction of sediment (〈63 μm), and the climate proxies within it, may represent conditions far from the deposition site. We hypothesize that hydrogen isotope ratios of alkenones, a class of lipids from phytoplankton, may provide insight into the source of fine fraction sediment. Because of their restricted sources, broad geographic distribution, and excellent preservation properties, alkenones are of particular interest in the emerging field of compound-specific hydrogen isotopic analysis, and the sedimentary abundances, extents of unsaturations, and isotopic compositions of alkenones provide quantitative and near-continuous records. We isolated alkenones from cultured unicellular algae (haptophyte Emiliania huxleyi), surface ocean particulate material, and open ocean sediments to determine the extent and variability of hydrogen isotopic fractionation in the di-, tri-, and tetraunsaturated C37 compounds. We then compared the δD of the alkenones in surface sediments between the Bermuda Rise and the Scotian Margin above which a large (~20%) δD gradient exists. We determined the fractionation between alkenones from suspended particulate samples and the water in which the phytoplankton lived, and examined the variability of alkenone δD during key climate transitions at the Bermuda Rise.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2004

Description: Onshore sediment transport and sandbar migration are important to the morphological evolution of beaches, but are not understood well. Here, a new model that accounts for accelerations of wave-orbital velocities predicts onshore sandbar migration observed on an ocean beach. In both the observations and the model, the location of the maximum acceleration-induced transport moves shoreward with the sandbar, resulting in feedback between waves and morphology that drives the bar shoreward until conditions change. A model that combines the effects of transport by waves and mean currents simulates both onshore and offshore bar migration observed over a 45-day period. A stochastic nonlinear Boussinesq model for the evolution of waves in shallow water is coupled with the wave-acceleration-driven sediment transport model to predict observed onshore sediment transport and sandbar migration given observations of the offshore wave field and initial bathymetry. The Boussinesq-wave model has skill in predicting wave spectra, as well as velocity and acceleration statistics across the surfzone, but it underpredicts acceleration skewness on top of the sandbar. As a result, the coupled wave-sediment transport model underpredicts sediment transport, and thus fails to move the sandbar onshore. Although the coupled wave and sediment model can be tuned to yield skillful predictions of onshore sandbar migration, in general, closer agreement between observed and modeled statistics of the wave field is essential for the successful application of wave models to predict sediment transport.

Description: Financial support was provided by the Army Research Office (DAAD1999-1-0250 and DAAD19-03-10072); the Office of Naval Research, Coastal Dynamics and Coastal Geosciences Programs (N00014-02-10145); the National Ocean Partnership Program (B- 428260); the National Science Foundation, Physical Oceanography (OCE-01l5850); and fellowships from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico (CNPq) - Brazil (201085/97-6), and from the Academic Programs Offce of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February, 2006

Description: In this thesis, I present high-resolution stable-isotope and planktonic-fauna records from Bering Sea sediment cores, spanning the time period from 50,000 years ago to the present. During Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS3) at 30-20 ky BP (kiloyears before present) in a core from 1467m water depth near Umnak Plateau, there were episodic occurrences of diagenetic carbonate minerals with very low δ13C (-22:4h), high δ18O (6.5h), and high [Mg]/[Ca], which seem associated with sulfate reduction of organic matter and possibly anaerobic oxidation of methane. The episodes lasted less than 1000 years and were spaced about 1000 years apart. During MIS3 at 55-20 ky BP in a core from 2209m water depth on Bowers Ridge, N. pachyderma (s.) and Uvigerina δ18O and δ13C show no coherent variability on millennial time scales. Bering Sea sediments are dysoxic or laminated during the deglaciation. A high sedimentation rate core (200 cm/ky) from 1132m on the Bering Slope is laminated during the Bolling warm phase, Allerod warm phase, and early Holocene, where the ages of lithological transitions agree with the ages of those climate events in Greenland (GISP2) to well within the uncertainty of the age models. The subsurface distribution of radiocarbon was estimated from a compilation of published and unpublished North Pacific benthic-planktonic 14C measurements (475-2700 m water depth). There was no consistent change in 14C profiles between the present and the Last Glacial Maximum, Bolling-Allerod, or the Younger Dryas cold phase. N. pachyderma (s.) δ18O in the Bering Slope core decreases rapidly (in less than 220 y) by 0.7-0.8% at the onset of the Bolling and the end of the Younger Dryas. These isotopic shifts are accompanied by transient decreases in the relative abundance of N. pachyderma (s.), suggesting that the isotopic events are transient warmings and sustained freshenings.

Description: The work in this thesis was supported by the National Science Foundation award OPP-9912122 to Lloyd Keigwin, the Oak Foundation of Boston, Massachusetts, the Stanley Watson Fellowship, the Paul Fye Fellowship, and the Academic Programs Office at WHOI.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2006

Description: This thesis develops methods for estimating wideband shallow-water acoustic communication channels. The very shallow water wideband channel has three distinct features: large dimension caused by extensive delay spread; limited number of degrees of freedom (DOF) due to resolvable paths and inter-path correlations; and rapid fluctuations induced by scattering from the moving sea surface. Traditional LS estimation techniques often fail to reconcile the rapid fluctuations with the large dimensionality. Subspace based approaches with DOF reduction are confronted with unstable subspace structure subject to significant changes over a short period of time. Based on state-space channel modeling, the first part of this thesis develops algorithms that jointly estimate the channel as well as its dynamics. Algorithms based on the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and the Expectation Maximization (EM) approach respectively are developed. Analysis shows conceptual parallels, including an identical second-order innovation form shared by the EKF modification and the suboptimal EM, and the shared issue of parameter identifiability due to channel structure, reflected as parameter unobservability in EKF and insufficient excitation in EM. Modifications of both algorithms, including a two-model based EKF and a subspace EM algorithm which selectively track dominant taps and reduce prediction error, are proposed to overcome the identifiability issue. The second part of the thesis develops algorithms that explicitly find the sparse estimate of the delay-Doppler spread function. The study contributes to a better understanding of the channel physical constraints on algorithm design and potential performance improvement. It may also be generalized to other applications where dimensionality and variability collide.

Description: Financial support for this thesis research was provided by the Office of Naval Research and the WHOI Academic Program Office.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution October, 1977.

Description: Sediment traps designed to yield quantitative data of particulate fluxes have been deployed and successfully recovered on four moorings in the deep sea. The traps were designed after extensive calibration of different shapes of containers. Further intercalibration of trap design was made in field experiments over a range of current velocities. Experiments with Niskin bottles showed that concentrations of suspended particulate matter obtained with standard filtration methods were low and had to be increased by an average factor of 1.5 to correct for particles settling below the sampling spigot. The trap arrays were designed to sample the particulate fluxes both immediately above and within the nepheloid layer. The data derived from the traps have been used to estimate vertical fluxes of particles including, for the first time, an attempt to distinguish between the flux of material settling from the upper water column (the "primary flux") and material which has been resuspended from some region of the sea floor (resuspension flux). From these data and measurements of the net nepheloid standing crop of particles one can also estimate a residence time for particles resuspended in the nepheloid layer. This residence time appears to be on the order of days to weeks in the bottom 15 m of the water column and weeks to months in the bottom 100 m. Between 80% and 90% of the particles collected in the six traps where particle size was measured were less than 63 μm. The mean size of particles collected in the nepheloid layer was about 20 μm, and above the nepheloid layer the mean was 11 μm. Less than 3% of the organic carbon produced in the photic zone at the trap sites was collected as primary flux 500 m above the sea floor. The primary flux measured at two sites was enough to supply 75% on the upper Rise and 160% on the mid Rise of the organic carbon needed for respiration and for burial in the accumulating sediments. From an intercomparison of the composition of particles falling rapidly (collected in traps), falling slowly or not at all (collected in water bottles), and resting on the sea floor (from a core top), it was determined that elements associated with biogenic matter, such as Ca, Sr, Cu, and I, were carried preferentially by the particles falling rapidly. Once the particles reached the bottom, the concentration of those elements was decreased through decomposition, respiration, or dissolution. Dissolution appears rapid in the vicinity of the sea floor, because despite an abundance of radiolarians, diatoms, and juvenile foraminifera collected in all traps, these forms were rare in core samples. The dynamic nature of thenepheloid layer makes it possible for particles to be resuspended many times before they are finally buried. This enables sediment to be carried long distances from its origin. The recycling of particles near the sea floor may increase dissolution of silicious and carbonate matter.

Description: Financial aid was provided in the form of a research assistantship from the Office of Naval Research through MIT and WHOI.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September, 1975

Description: Erosion processes involving fine-grained marine sediments were studied by using an in situ flume to erode undisturbed bottom sediments on the sea floor in Buzzards Bay, a shallow marine embayment off the Massachusetts coast. Tte muddy sea floor in that area is characterized by a deposit-feeding infauna that reworks the sediments. Observations made with the in situ flume suggest that erosion resistance of compacted bottom sediments is up to twice as great as the erosion resistance of biogenically reworked sediments. Estimates of erosional bed shear stress from the in situ flume experiments are similar to estimates made during this study of bed shear stress developed in near-bottom tidal currents. It is inferred that erosion by the in situ flume produces reasonable estimates of bed shear stress necessary to erode undisturbed bottom sediments on the sea floor. Buzzards Bay muds were redeposited in a laboratory flume and eroded after various periods of reworking by the deposit-feeding organisms contained in them. Other Buzzards Bay mud samples were treated to remove organic matter, and the erosion resistance of flat beds of these sediments was also investigated in a laboratory flume. The surface of a biogenically reworked bed after two months was covered with mounds, burrows, trails, and aggregates composed of sediments and organic material. This bed was similar in appearance to many of the beds eroded by the in situ flume. The two month bed eroded at an erosional shear stress similar to the erosional shear stress necessary to erode the in situ Buzzards Bay muds (0.8 dynes/cm2 ) . Beds biogenically reworked for shorter periods had high values of erosional shear stress, up to twice that of the two month bed. The bed shear stress necessary to erode flat beds of Buzzards Bay sediments increased as the concentration of organic matter in the sediments increased. Deposit-feeders were absent in these beds, and the mode of deposition was kept uniform, so the increase of erosion resistance with increase in organic content is considered a reliable indication of sediment behavior, and not an artifact of experimental conditions. During the in situ experiments, lee drifts were created behind resistant roughness elements on the sea floor. A brief study of lee drift formation in the laboratory suggests that the formation of lee drifts from fine-grained sediments can be predicted to take place when the body Reynolds number of the resistant roughness elements is below a critical value.

Description: The Office of Naval Research supported this research and provided salary support through grants to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Description: Submitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Ocean Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2007

Description: This thesis introduces an algorithm for inverting for the geoacoustic properties of the seafloor in shallow water. The input data required by the algorithm are estimates of the amplitudes of the normal modes excited by a low-frequency pure-tone sound source, and estimates of the water column sound speed profiles at the source and receiver positions. The algorithm makes use of perturbation results, and computes the small correction to an estimated background profile that is necessary to reproduce the measured mode amplitudes. Range-dependent waveguide properties can be inverted for so long as they vary slowly enough in range that the adiabatic approximation is valid. The thesis also presents an estimator which can be used to obtain the input data for the inversion algorithm from pressure measurements made on a vertical line array (VLA). The estimator is an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), which treats the mode amplitudes and eigenvalues as state variables. Numerous synthetic and real-data examples of both the inversion algorithm and the EKF estimator are provided. The inversion algorithm is similar to eigenvalue perturbation methods, and the thesis also presents a combination mode amplitude/eigenvalue inversion algorithm, which combines the advantages of the two techniques.

Description: The funding that made this research possible came from the Office of Naval Research, and the WHOI Academic Programs Office.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2005

Description: This thesis develops and utilizes a method for analyzing data from the North Pacific Acoustic Laboratory's (NPAL) Basin Acoustic Seamount Scattering Experiment (BASSEX). BASSEX was designed to provide data to support the development of analytical techniques and methods which improve the understanding of sound propagation around underwater seamounts. The depth-dependent sound velocity profile of typical ocean waveguides force sound to travel in convergence zones about a minimum sound speed depth. This ducted nature of the ocean makes modeling the acoustic field around seamounts particularly challenging, compared to an isovelocity medium. The conical shape of seamounts also adds to the complexity of the scatter field. It is important to the U.S. Navy to understand how sound is diffracted around this type of topographic feature. Underwater seamounts can be used to conceal submarines by absorbing and scattering the sound they emit. BASSEX measurements have characterized the size and shape of the forward scatter field around the Kermit-Roosevelt Seamount in the Pacific Ocean. Kermit- Roosevelt is a large, conical seamount which shoals close to the minimum sound speed depth, making it ideal for study. Acoustic sources, including M-sequence and linear frequency-modulated sources, were stationed around the seamount at megameter ranges. A hydrophone array was towed around the seamount to locations which allowed measurement of the perturbation zone. Results from the method developed in this thesis show that the size and shape of the perturbation zone measured coincides with theoretical and experimental results derived in previous work.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June, 1980

Description: This thesis consists of three papers applying the techniques of time series analysis to geophysical data. Surface wave dispersion along the Walvis Ridge, South Atlantic Ocean, is obtained by bandpass filtering the recorded seismogram in the frequency domain. The group velocity is anomalously low in the period range of 15-50 s, and formal inversion of the data indicates both crustal thickening to 12.5 km and low shear velocity (4.25-4.35 km/s) to depths of 40-50 km. The electromagnetic induction fields at a deep ocean site northeast of Hawaii were used to determine the electrical conductivity of the earth to 400 km depth. Singular value decomposition of the data matrix indicates three degrees of freedom, suggesting source field complications and a two dimensional conductive structure. Inversion of one of the principal terms in the response function shows an abrupt rise in electrical conductivity to 0.05 mho/m near 160 km with no resolvable decrease below this. A model study suggests that moving source fields influence the induction appreciably in the other principal response tunction. A set of piston cores from the northeast Atlantic Ocean are used to construct paleomagnetic time series covering the interval 25-127 kybp. Stratigraphic control is provided by counts of planktonic toraminifera, and empirical orthogonal function analysis shows a significant decrease in sedimentation rate at the interglaciai/glacial transition. The sediments are magnetically stable and reliable relative paleointensity measurements could be obtained. Spectral analysis of the directions reveals a predominant 10 ky periodicity and no dominant looping direction.

Description: I was supported for the early parts of this work by a NSF Graduate Fellowship. The Walvis Ridge study was supported by the WHOI Education Office and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The induction study was funded by the NSF under grants OCE74-12730 and OCE77-8633, and by the WHOI Ocean Industries Program. The paleomagnetic study was supported by NSF contracts OCE77-82255 and ÖCE79-19258.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2005

Description: The fate of trace metals in contaminated coastal sediments is poorly understood, yet critical for effective coastal management. The aim of this thesis is to investigate and quantify the mechanisms leading to the release of silver, lead and copper across the sediment-water interface. Two contrasting sites were investigated, a heavily contaminated site in Boston Harbor and a less impacted, offshore site in Massachusetts Bay. High-resolution porewater and solid phase samples were collected in each season to determine the diagenetic cycles and chemistry controlling the fate of these metals. The trace metals are scavenged by iron oxyhydroxides and released to the porewaters when these oxides are reduced. At the strongly reducing site in Boston Harbor, there is seasonal transfer of trace metals from oxide phases in winter, to sulfides phase in summer. At the Massachusetts Bay site, due to the lack of sulfide, the metals are focused into the surface oxide layer, giving a solid phase enrichment. There is a diffusive flux of copper to the water column throughout the year, while silver is released only in winter. Lead is strongly scavenged and is rarely released to the overlying waters. Analysis of reduced sulfur compounds in the porewaters has shown that there is also a significant flux of these strong ligands to the overlying waters. Polysulfide species enhance the solubility of copper within the porewaters. Sediment resuspension fluxes were quantified using an erosion chamber. Sediment resuspension leads to enhanced release of dissolved metals and is especially important in redistributing contaminants as the first particles to be eroded are enriched in trace metals. The total release of dissolved metals from the sediments by diffusion and sediment resuspension is estimated to be 60% and 10% of the riverine flux for copper and lead respectively. With continued pollution control reducing the discharge of metals from other sources, the benthic release of metals will become increasingly important terms in the metal budget of Boston Harbor.

Description: Tills work is a result of research sponsored by the NOAA National Sea Grant College Program Office, Department of Commerce, under Grant. No. NA16RG2273, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant Project Nos. 1-01-22227310 and 1-01-22227338. Additional funding was provided by the University of Western Australia Hackett Scholarship, the United States Geological Survey under Cooperative Agreement Number OOHQAGOOOI and the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE-0220892.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2006

Description: South American climate has undergone dramatic changes since the last glacial period, as evidenced from Cariaco Basin (Venezuelan coast) and Peru Margin marine sediment biomarker records. Compounds derived from vascular plant leaf waxes and delivered to the marine sedimentary environment, including long-chain (C24-C32) nalkanoic acids, were used as proxies for terrestrial vegetation type, aridity, and atmospheric circulation. Marine biomarkers, such as sterols and phytol, were used to reconstruct productivity in the Peru Margin upwelling zone, where sedimentary conditions are not conducive to the preservation of foraminifera. Through the use of organic molecular isotopic techniques and multi-molecular stratigraphy, a great deal can be learned about communities of marine organisms and terrestrial plants that existed in the past and the environments in which they lived. Vascular plant leaf wax carbon and hydrogen isotopic records were generated from n-alkanoic acids preserved in Cariaco Basin marine sediments. These records were compared to previously established pollen and climate records and were found to parallel local millennial-scale climate changes between the late Glacial and Preboreal periods, which were characterized by migrations of the inter-tropical convergence zone. Differences in δD between C16-C18 and C24-C30 n-alkanoic acids suggest a marine source for the shorter chain lengths and a terrestrial source for the longer chains. Stacked δD and δ13C records both exhibited isotopic enrichment during the late Glacial and Younger Dryas periods and depletion during the Bølling-Allerød and Preboreal periods. If interpreted as an aridity proxy, the δD record is in agreement with Cariaco Basin sediment grey scale records, suggesting that the late Glacial and Younger Dryas were more arid than the Bølling-Allerød and Preboreal periods. n-Alkanoic acid δ13C, which is a proxy for C3 versus C4 plant type, indicates that C3 plants predominated in this area of the tropics during warm and wet periods, such as the Bølling-Allerød and the Holocene, and C4 plants proliferated during cooler and more arid periods, such as the Glacial and Younger Dryas. The biomarker δ13C record agrees with pollen data previously developed from Cariaco Basin sediments, confirming that leaf wax compounds preserved in marine sediments can accurately record terrestrial vegetation changes. Analytical methods utilizing stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) and thermal desorption were developed and applied to investigate lipid organic matter in a suite of alpine ice cores. These methods permit use of small volume (10-30 ml) samples, as would be required for high-resolution down-core analyses. SBSE involves using a polymer coated stir bar to extract organic matter from aqueous samples, after which it is loaded directly into a thermal desorption unit and the organic matter transferred in its entirety to a gas chromatograph inlet. To test these methods and the organic content of tropical ice, post-industrial samples from two South American, two Asian, and one African ice core were analyzed. Compounds identified in the modern ice core samples included natural and anthropogenic biomarkers such as n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids, nalkyl amides and nitriles, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and diterpenoids. Variability in the distributions of these compounds between different cores demonstrated that the lipid organic fraction in each core was representative of mostly local inputs. To further investigate natural inputs, several pre-industrial samples were analyzed from the Sajama ice core in the Andes and The Puruogangri core on the Tibetan Plateau. Inputs of terrestrial vegetation combustion biomarkers such as PAHs, diterpenoids, and alkyl amides were consistent with periods of enhanced aridity in each core. The results of this investigation demonstrate the utility of the methodology, which could now be applied to generate very high-resolution biomarker records from tropical ice cores. Gas chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC/TOF-MS) was used to generate a high-resolution, multi-molecular organic biomarker record from Peru Margin sediments (~11oS, 252 m water depth) for the last 15 ka. Because of their position beneath the oxygen minimum zone of a productive upwelling region, these sediments contain a wealth of compounds that can be exploited as paleoclimate indicators. TOF-MS and fast GC techniques allowed me to generate this record in a short amount of time and without employing the traditional suite of purification techniques. Before about 9 ka, organic carbon and biomarker concentration records exhibited similar variability, implying a forcing mechanism that affected input and/or preservation of both marine and terrestrial organic matter, such as large-scale climate change. Organic carbon and biomarker abundances then systematically increased throughout the Holocene and exhibited higher frequency variability, suggesting overall enhanced productivity from rapidly evolving planktonic communities. Similar patterns of variability between bacterial hopanol, sterol degradation product, and primary productivity biomarker records suggest that the productivity biomarkers are recording sea surface and water column processes, and are not significantly biased by sedimentary diagenesis. Low bound sulfur content in lipid extracts and a lack of observed sulfur-containing compounds argue against significant sulfurization and resultant biomarker sequestration in 1228D sediments. Factor analysis provided a statistical means of separating terrestrial and marine organic inputs, and reinforced the interpretations that very long chain n-alkanoic acids (C30-C32) are terrestrially derived and sterol compounds primarily represent marine algal inputs. In all, the biomarker records suggest millennial-scale changes in upwelling strength superimposed on longer-term trends, with additional variability in contributions from specific precursors, such as dinoflagellates. Terrestrial leaf wax compounds also exhibited high-amplitude, millennial-scale variability, but with a different pattern of change than the marine inputs. GC/TOF-MS was shown to be a useful tool for generating high-resolution records of the type necessary to understand the relationships between biomarkers in a complex and sensitive depositional environment such as the Peru Margin. Climate signals embedded in the Peru Margin biomarker records provided clues as to the productivity and upwelling histories of the Peru Margin, as well as regional terrestrial vegetation. Elevated concentrations of marine biomarkers suggest enhanced upwelling and productivity from about 6.5 ka to the present on the Peru Margin, with lower-amplitude millennial-scale variations occurring throughout this period. Enhanced dinosterol abundances after 6.5 ka are consistent with greater occurrences and/or strength of El Niño, while concurrently enhanced upwelling suggests a parallel increase in La Niña activity. Similar timing of mid to late Holocene variability between Peru Margin marine biomarker records, a faunal sea surface temperature record from the eastern tropical Atlantic, and Andean paleoclimate records suggests strong climate links between these regions of the tropics, likely driven by broad-scale changes in El Niño and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and trade wind strength. The C30 n-alkanoic acid, which is representative of vascular plant leaf wax inputs, exhibited millennial-scale variability superimposed on longer-term trends that may be related to aridity, assuming fluvial transport of terrestrial material. n-Alkanoic acid δ13C is generally enriched during periods of enhanced leaf wax abundance, consistent with increased inputs of C4 plant material at these times.

Description: Funding for this research was provided by a Schlanger Ocean Drilling Fellowship, which is part of the NSF-sponsored U.S. Science Support Program (USSSP). An NSF grant to TIE (OCE-0402533) provided additional funding for the research presented in Chapters 3-5. Funding for the Cariaco Basin isotopic analyses was provided by the Frank and Lisina Hoch Endowed Fund and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Director’s General Discretionary Fund.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2006

Description: To provide a new perspective on the fate of both natural organic matter and hydrophobic organic contaminants (HOCs) in marine sediments, we have investigated the relationship between radiocarbon (14C) age and the different modes of association in aquatic sediments and soils. Radiocarbon is a sensitive tracer of OM provenance, with variations in its natural abundance reflecting the age and origin of material. The main objective has been to determine the significance of these associations, and to assess how they affect the transport, bioavailability, preservation and residence times of organic compounds in the environment. Our results indicate that the majority of HOCs that persist in marine sediments are solvent-extractable and incorporation into insoluble sediment residues is not quantitatively significant. For pristine sediments, systematic variations in 14C content are observed between different chemically defined sedimentary organic fractions. These variations are dependent on organic matter inputs and/or the affects of diagenesis. Our observations also provide evidence for the protection of labile marine carbon by chemical binding. Finally, the persistence of n-alkanes from biogenic sources compared to those derived from petroleum indicates that protective matrix association can play a crucial role in determining the long-term fate of a compound. Overall, it is clear that both natural organic compounds and HOCs can undergo very different fates depending on their mode of introduction to, and physical disposition in environmental matrices.

Description: Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation, CHE-0089172 to T.I. Eglinton and C.M. Reddy, and OCE-82567700 to T.I. Eglinton. I received support from a Charles Davis Hollister Fellowship from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution January, 1978

Description: Many of the small-scale topographic features (dimensions of centimeters to kilometers) found on the Blake-Bahama Outer Ridge (western North Atiantic, water depth greater than 4000 m) and in the Rockall Trough (northeastern North Atlantic, water depth greater than 2000 m) have been formed as bed forms of deep currents. These bed forms, all developed in cohesive sediments, include current ripples (spacings of tens of centimeters, formed transverse to the flow), longitudinal triangular ripples (spacings of meters, formed in sandy muds and parallel to the flow), furrows (spacings of tens to 100's of meters, formed parallel to the flow and presently either erosional or depositional), and regular sediment waves (spacings of a few kilometers, now found oblique to the flow and migrating either upstream or downstream). The local distribution of any given bed form is influenced by the presence of larger features. Bed forms are often found in zones which strike parallel to the regional contours. Debris flows, affecting areas of 1000's to 10,000's of square kilometers, are also present in these areas. A debris flow studied in the Rockall Trough is erosional at its shallowest depths and depositional at greater depths. Gravitational flows strike perpendicular to the contours. Pockmarks (tens of meters in diameter, marking fluid seeps) are also found on the Blake-Bahama Outer Ridge. The larger topographic features (greater than several meters) with steep slopes (greater than about 20°) can be observed on surface echo-sounding profiles either as fields of regular hyperbolic echoes (e.g., echoes from regularly spaced furrows), fields of irregularly spaced, dissimilar hyperbolae (e.g., echoes from blocks, ridges, and folds in debris flows), or as regular features whose structure is often obscured by side echoes (e.g., echoes from sediment waves). Although near-bottom investigations are required to describe the features, the nature of the sea floor can often be inferred from the character of the echo-sounding profile. Similar echo-sounding records in different areas of the ocean indicate the presence of similar sea-floor features. The morphology of the bed forms studied and the current and temperature structure of the overlying water column lead to conclusions about bed form origin and present-day interactions with deep currents. Furrows form as erosional bed forms during high-velocity (〉20? cm/sec) current events by large, helical secondary circulations in the bottom boundary layer. Once formed, furrows may develop into depositional features, or they may continue as erosional ones, depending on the local currents and the sediment supply. Large, regular sediment waves may be formed at current speeds of 5 to 10 cm/sec by lee waves generated by topographic irregularities on the sea floor, such as submarine canyons, or by instabilities in the flow of deep, contour-following currents. Sediment waves develop where there is an abundant supply of sediment and steady mean currents. Waves appear to migrate upstream where tidal current fluctuations are smaller than the mean velocity, and downstream where they are larger. Near-bottom currents appear to be faster on the downstream side of upstream-migrating sediment waves than on their upstream side. The resulting variations in bed shear stress lead to higher sedimentation rates on the upstream side and bed form migration in that direction.

Description: This research was made possible by National Science Foundation grants DES 73-06657 and OCE 76-22152, and Office of Naval Research contract N00014-74-C-0262; NR083-004 to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, NSF grant OCE 74-01671 to Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, and numerous NSF grants and ONR contracts to Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September, 2005

Description: This thesis evaluates the nature and magnitude of tropical climate variability from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present. The temporal variability of two specific tropical climate phenomena is examined. The first is the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) in the Atlantic basin, which affects sea surface temperature (SST) and precipitation patterns throughout the tropical Atlantic. The second is the strength of the Indian Monsoon, an important component of both tropical and global climate. Long-term variations in the position of the ITCZ in the Atlantic region are determined using both organic geochemical techniques and climate modeling. Upwelling in Cariaco Basin is reconstructed using chlorin steryl esters as proxies for phytoplankton community structure. We find that the diatom population was larger during the Younger Dryas cold event, indicating that upwelling was enhanced and the mean position of the ITCZ was farther south during the Younger Dryas than it is today. A climate simulation using an ocean-atmosphere general circulation model confirms these results by demonstrating that the ITCZ shifts southward in response to high-latitude cooling. The climate of the Arabian Sea region is dominated by the Indian Monsoon. Results from modem sediments from a suite of cores located throughout the Arabian Sea suggest that wind strength is well represented by the accumulation rate and carbon isotopic composition of terrestrially-derived plant waxes in sediments. Arabian Sea SST patterns, reconstructed from a suite of sediment cores representing four time slices utilizing the Mg/Ca SST proxy, suggest that both the summer and winter monsoons were enhanced 8,000 yr BP relative to today while the summer monsoon was weaker and the winter monsoon stronger at 15,000 and 20,000 yr. These results are confirmed by a time-series reconstruction of SST on the Oman Margin that reveals that SST at this site is sensitive to both regional and global climate processes. The results of this thesis demonstrate that tropical climate, as evaluated by a number of different proxies as well as climate models, has varied substantially over the past 20,000 years and is closely coupled to climate at high-latitudes.

Description: This work was funded by the National Science Foundation (OCE02-20776 and OCE0334598 to D. Oppo), a Schlanger Ocean Drilling Program Fellowship, a WHOI Watson Fellowship, and a Fye Teaching Fellowship.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2004

Description: The challenges of directly observing active turbidity currents necessitates the consideration of preserved deposits for deciphering the behavior of these systems. In this thesis, I take advantage 3-D subsurface seismic data and outcrop exposures to study turbidites at scales ranging from bed to basin. At the basin scale, I develop a method to estimate the time-frame over which sedimentation and subsidence come into equilibrium. Using seismic data from the Fisk Basin, Gulf of Mexico, I find that, during periods of broadly distributed, sheet-like deposition, equilibrium time is on the order of 4.6 x 105 years. In contrast, during periods of confined channel development, that time drops to 2.0 x 105 years. Identifying these equilibrium times is critical because, at times below equilibrium, autogenic and allogenic stratigraphic signals cannot be distinguished. At the scale of turbidite beds, detailed grainsize analyses of sediment samples from the Capistrano Formation, San Clemente, California reveal the potential for misinterpretation that arises when deposits are studied without consideration for the dynamics of sedimentation. Previously interpreted as the result of anomalous sandy turbidites, using simple bed shear calculation and Froude scaling, I show that these coarse sediments are consistent with classical muddy, low-density turbidity currents. Finally, at the scale of amalgamated turbidite beds, I use outcrop mapping and aerial photography of the Zerissenne Turbidite System, Namibia to provide a measure of lateral and vertical continuity of a deepwater turbidite system. Previous studies have been hampered by limited exposure while the extensive continuous exposure of the Zerissenne show that correlation lengths of these systems can exceed 1.5 km.

Description: Chevron Texaco provided much of the funding for this degree.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2005

Description: This thesis investigates the application of acoustic measurements in the deep and shallow ocean to infer the sound velocity profile (svp) in the seabed. For the deep water ocean, an exact method based on the Gelfand-Levitan integral equation is evaluated. The input data is the complex plane-wave reflection coefficient estimated from measurements of acoustic pressure in water. We apply the method to experimental data and estimate both the reflection coefficient and the seabed svp. A rigorous inversion scheme is hence applied in a realistic problem. For the shallow ocean, an inverse eigenvalue technique is developed. The input data are the eigenvalues associated with propagating modes, measured as a function of source-receiver range. We investigate the estimation of eigenvalues from acoustic fields measured in laterally varying environments. We also investigate the errors associated with estimating varying modal eigenvalues, analogous to the estimation of time-varying frequencies in multicomponent signals, using time-varying autoregressive (TVAR) methods. We propose and analyze two AR sequential estimators, one for model coefficients, another for the zeros of the AR characteristic polynomial. The decimation of the pressure field defined in a discrete range grid is analyzed as a tool to improve AR estimation. The nonlinear eigenvalue inverse problem of estimating the svp from a sequence of eigenvalues is solved by iterating linearized approximations. The solution to the inverse problem is proposed in the form of a Kalman filter. The resolution and variance of the eigenvalue inverse problem are analyzed in terms of the Cramer-Rao lower bound and the Backus-Gilbert (BG) resolution theory. BG theory is applied to the design of shallow-water experiments. A method is developed to compensate for the Doppler deviation observed in experiments with moving sources.

Description: I am grateful for the support of my work provided by the WHOI Academic Programs Office and the Office of Naval Research.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution January, 1977

Description: Particulate matter samples, split into 〈l μm, 1-53 μm, and 〉53 μm size fractions have been obtained using a Large Volume in situ Filtration System (LVFS) during the SOUTHLANT expedition, R/V CHAIN 115. Profiles to 400 m are reported for LVFS Stns. 2 and 4-8. Stns. 4, 5, and 8 (S. E. Atlantic, coastal waters near Walvis Bay and Cape Town, high biological productivity); Stns. 6 and 2 (S.E. Atlantic, Walvis Bay region and equatorial Atlantic, moderate productivity); and Sta. 7 (S.E. Atlantic, edge of central gyre, low productivity) formed a suite of samples for the study of the chemical, biological, morpholigical distributions and of the vertical mass flux of particulate matter as a function of biological productivity. All samples were analysed for Na, K, Mg, Ca, carbonate, opal, Sr, C and N and those from Sta. 2 were further analysed for P, Fe, δ13C, 7Be, 214Bi, 214Pb, (226Ra), 210Po, and 210Pb. Biological distributions of Acantharia, dinoflagellates, coccolithophorids, Foraminifera, diatoms, silicoflagellates, Radiolaria, and tintinnids were made by light microscopy (LM) and augmented by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Size and morphological distributions of the 〉53 μm particles, especially Foraminifera, Acantharia, fecal pellets, and fecal matter have been determined by LM and SEM. The particle distributions were controlled at all stations by processes of production, consumption, fragmentation, and aggregation. Maxima in organism abundance and particulate mass were generally coincident. They were found nearest the surface when the mixed layer was absent or poorly developed, and at the base of the mixed layer at the other stations. Organism vertical distributions showed consistent features: Acantharia, and dinoflagellates were always nearest the surface; Foraminifera and diatoms were shallower than or at the base of the mixed layer; Radiolaria and tintinnids were found in the upper thermocline. Coccolithophorids and diatoms were the dominant sources of particulate carbonate and opal in the near surface waters, coccoliths and diatom fragments, deeper. Features of the distributions of particulate matter attributed to the feeding activities of zooplankton were: strong concentration gradients in organisms, mass, and organic matter; enrichment of the 〉53 μm fraction with coccoliths causing the steady decrease in 〉53 μm Si/carbonate ratio with depth from values as high as 45 to values near 1.0 at 400 m; the decrease in organic content with depth from values near 100 % near the surface to 50 and 60% at 400 m for the 〈53 and 〉53 μm size fractions; the fragmentation of most material below 100 m; and the production of fecal pellets and fecal matter which are carriers of fine material to the sea floor. Other features were: the nearly constant organic C/N ratios (7.3±0.5 δ) found for the 1-53 μm fractions at Stns. 4, 5, 6, and 8 compared with the steady increase observed at Stns. 2 and 7 with depth; particulate carbon was rather uniformy distributed below 200 m with concentrations showing a mild reflection of surface productivity; the 〈1 μC/N and δ13C values are lower and lighter than the 1-53 μm fraction, perhaps indicative of the presence of marine bacteria; the Ca/carbonate ratios in most samples significantly exceeded 1.0, values as high as 2.5 were observed at Sta. 8; the xs Ca and K have shallow regenerative cycles and contrast with Mg which is bound to a refractory component of organic matter; based on a organic C/ xs Ca ratio of 100-200:1 for surfàce samples, the cycling of xs Ca was calculated to be 1-2 x 1013mol/cm2/y compared with the production of carbonate, 7±2 x 1013 mol/cm2/y. Chemical effects noted were: organic matter had both binding capabilities and ion-exchange capacity for major and minor ions present in seawater. Acantharia (SrS04) dissolve most significantly below 200 m at Sta.2. The vertical mass fluxes through 400 m at Stas. 2, 5, 6, and 7 were calculated from size distributions measured in 1 m3 in seawater for Foramifera, fecal pellets, and fecal matter. Two flux models were used together with Junge distributions for these calculations. Fecal matter and Forainifera transported most mass at Stns. 2 and 5 where the fluxes were between 2 and 3, and 5 and 6 gm/cm2/1000y respectively; fècal matter, Foramnifera, and fecal pellets contributed equally to the .9-1.3gm/cm2/1000y flux at Sta. 6; and fecal pellets and Foraminifera were the carriers of 0.1-0.3 gm/cm2/1000y to the sea floor. Corresponding chemical fluxes of organic carbon, carbonate, and opal were: 80-90, 11-24, and ~10 mmol/cm2/1000y at Sta. 5; 15-20, 2.7-5.0 and 1.7-2.5 mmol/cm2/1000y at Sta. 6; 1-4, 0.6-1.5, and 0.1-0.3 mmol/cm2/1000y at Sta. 7, and 40-65, 4.6-7.4, and 4.9-7.9 mmol/cm2/1000y at station 2. Over 90% of the organic matter produced in the euphotic zone is recycled in the upper 400 m. The efficiency is nearly 99% in areas of low productivity; the organic to carbonate carbon ratios are highest at locations where the flux is greatest as are the Si/carbonate ratios. Besides carbonate, opal, celestite, and other mineral phases, organic matter may be a significant carrier of minor and trace elements to the deep ocean.

Description: This work was supported by contract N00014-75-C029l from the Office of Naval Research and by the Doherty Foundation.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology October 1979

Description: An investigation was carried out to observe the geologic effects of steady bottom currents on sediments of East Katla Ridge on the southern insular rise of Iceland. Near-bottom southwest to west-flowing currents exceeded 20 cm sec-1 for two weeks over a 25-kilometer wide section of the ridge flank between approximately 1400 and 1800 meters water depth; maximum density and minimum temperature were observed at 1800 meters. Total transport of Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water was calculated to be 5.0 x 106 m3 sec-1; suspended sediment transport is approximately 0.4 x 106 grams sec-1, with a net deposition of 10 to 15 cm/1000 years estimated from the flux difference in and out of the station array. Sediment distribution patterns indicate that the current axis, where flow exceeds approximately 15 cm sec-1, is a site of erosion and winnowing (sand layer formation) while the current margin is a site of rapid accumulation (from observed Holocene rates of 25 to 35 cm per 1000 yr to estimated rates of greater than 100 cm/1000 yr based on 3.5 kHz echo-sounder records). Holocene silty turbidites are locally thick in a sub-marine channel; sandy turbidites and current-winnowed 'sandy contourites' are present in the axis of the major submarine canyon. ‘ Sandy contourite' deposits beneath the axis of the Iceland-Scotland Overflow Current are very poorly sorted muddy sands lacking primary sedimentary structures. Bioturbation is inferred to cause the unique characteristics of these deposits, as well as the absence of fine silt laminae in 'muddy contourites' at the current margin.

Description: Financial support for shipboard operations and most of the post-cruise data analysis was provided by NSF Grant OCE76-Sl49l to Dr. Charles Hollister. Sediment trap and hydrocast operations received partial support under ONR Contract N00014-74-C-0262.

Description: The continental shelf off the northeastern coast of the United States was the first of our offshore coastal areas to be charted in detail by the Coast and Geodetic Survey, starting on Georges Bank in 1930. The techniques responsible for this increased accuracy in offshore waters were first described by Rudé (1938) and have been constantly improved. From these soundings Veatch and Smith (1939) compiled their set of contour charts aided by a grant from the Penrose Bequest of the Geological Society of America. These soundings reopened the submarine canyon problem first commented upon by Dana (1863), which had gradually lapsed into obscurity from insuffcient data. The reader is, of course, well aware of the major controversy, with all its far reaching implications, which has been precipitated since the 1930 surveys of Georges Bank were brought to the attention of geologists by Shepard (1933). As more of the new surveys were completed, data from the field sheets were kindly furnished by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for use in dredging and coring operations. This field work, first reported in 1936, was continued from time to time until 1941 as new soundings became available. Rock dredging and coring has been carried out in every major canyon on the slope from Corsair Canyon at the tip of Georges Bank to Norfolk Canyon off the entrance to the Chesapeake (Fig. I). Numerous cores have also been taken from the areas in between; and while the whole slope from Georges to the Chesapeake has not been covered, it is believed that no significant areas have been missed. In fact, cores from the slope taken during the summers of 1940 and 1941 have yielded results that are corroborative rather than new. In 1938 on a cruise from Hudson Gorge to Norfolk Canyon, cores were taken on the slope in areas which Veatch had considered to be the most important (personal communication). In the following report the tows and cores will be described by areas from Georges Bank southwards, as the same region was revisited in successive years. The various samples, however, will be referred to by number followed by the year in which they were taken. The material is in storage in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. The late Joseph A. Cushman was kind enough to identify the Foraminifera which have been obtained in tows from the canyon walls and in cores, except for those described in Appendix A which is contributed by Fred B Phleger, Jr. Most of the type material is in storage in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, although at the present writing some is in the Cushman Laboratory in Sharon, Massachusetts. I am indebted to Lloyd W. Stephenson for identifying a molluscan fauna from one of the canyons, and to W. C. Mansfield who has reported on another formation. Numerous discussions with Percy E. Raymond have, as usual, proved most helpful, and thanks are also due to Eugenia C. Lambert for performing the mechanical analyses and to Constance French for other laboratory assistance. Phleger (1939, 1942, 1946) has previously published on the Foraminifera from the slope and deep water cores. This material is, at present, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Description: Submitted to the MIT Department of Biology and the WHOI Biology Department in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2006

Description: The physical and biological forces that drive zooplankton distribution and patchiness in an antarctic continental shelf region were examined, with particular emphasis on the Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba. This was accomplished by the application of acoustic, video, and environmental sensors during surveys of the region in and around Marguerite Bay, west of the Antarctic Peninsula, in the falls and winters of 2001 and 2002. An important component of the research involved the development and verification of methods for extracting estimates of ecologically-meaningful quantities from measurements of scattered sound. The distribution of acoustic volume backscattering at the single frequency of 120 kHz was first examined as an index of the overall biomass of zooplankton. Distinct spatial and seasonal patterns were observed that coincided with advective features. Improved parameterization was then achieved for a theoretical model of Antarctic krill target strength, the quantity necessary in scaling measurements of scattered sound to estimates of abundance, through direct measurement of all necessary model parameters for krill sampled in the study region and survey period. Methods were developed for identifying and delineating krill aggregations, allowing the distribution of krill to be distinguished from that of the overall zooplankton community. Additional methods were developed and verified for estimating the length, abundance, and biomass of krill in each acoustically-identified aggregation. These methods were applied to multifrequency acoustic survey data, demonstrating strong seasonal, inter-annual, and spatial variability in the distribution of krill biomass. Highest biomass was consistently associated with regions close to land where temperatures at depth were cool. Finally, the morphology, internal structure, and vertical position of individual krill aggregations were examined. The observed patterns of variability in aggregation characteristics between day and night, regions of high versus low food availability, and in the presence or absence of predators, together reinforced the conclusion that aggregation and diel vertical migration represent strategies to avoid visual predators, while also allowing the krill access to shallowly-distributed food resources. The various findings of this work have important implications to the fields of zooplankton acoustics and Antarctic krill ecology, especially in relation to the interactions of the krill with its predators.

Description: Funding was provided by a Fulbright Scholarship, a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Post-Graduate Scholarship, an Office of Naval Research Graduate Traineeship Award in Ocean Acoustics (Grant N00014-03-1-0212), the Comer Science and Education Foundation, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Academic Programs Office.

Description: Our knowledge of clastic, shallow-water sediments over any considerable area of ocean floor is very generalized and leaves much to be desired. The notations concerning the character of the bottom found on all charts are necessarily limited to a descriptive word or two, and although suffcient for navigational purposes, are of little use to the stratigrapher. Of all the marine sediments in the geologic column, those laid down in the neritic zone bulk the largest. They grade slowly into the sediments of the bathyal zone with no sharp line of demarcation. The early oceanographers were more interested in the clays and organic oozes of the deep sea and they added but little information concerning those materials which to the geologist are the most important. From the charts one is apt to obtain the impression that bottom deposits, excepting those of the deep sea, are very patchy in their distribution, and that there is little rhyme or reason in their arrangement. On the other hand the geological text books are apt to make it appear that there is an orderly gradation of sediments from coarse to fine in an offshore direction, and that a sandstone is always an indication of shallow water deposition, with a shale the reverse. Twenhofel has called attention to the role of environment in sedimentation. Like organisms, sediments are the resultants of a long sequence of environmental factors to which they have been exposed: action by currents, wave generated and otherwise, availability of supply and its type, distance from shore, and depth of water, plus their combined effect during times of changing sea level in the past. These factors have operated in the regions of production, during the period of transportation, and at the place of deposition, and the retention of older characteristics further complicates the record. The following study was undertaken with the hope that through a detailed and systematic series of samples not only might something be learned about the characteristics and distribution of the sediments of a particular area, but something also of the environmental factors which govern conditions of sedimentation in a major ocean.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution May, 1976

Description: The acoustic-internal wave interaction in an acoustic waveguide is investigated using wave techniques. Refractive index fluctuations due to the vertical displacements of the internal waves create an inhomogeneous waveguide. The analysis uses weak scattering theory based upon the Rytov perturbation technique. It is found that the internal wave field acts as a diffraction grating in permtting only certain scattered acoustic waves to propagate through the waveguide. Since the internal waves are continuously distributed in wavenumer space, the acoustic fluctuations become a statistical average with a bias toward particular spatial internal wavelengths. The multimode nature of acoustic propagation precludes the linear relationship of internal wave statistics to acoustic amplitude and phase fluctuations. Assuming statistical independence between amplitude and phase fluctuations within a mode and between different modes, it is shown that the total phase-rate fluctuation is a weighted sum of the phase-rate fluctuations in the individual modes. Using a statistical internal wave model [C. Garrett and W. Munk, Geophys. Fluid Dynam., 2, 225-264 (1972)] predictions of acoustic fluctuations are made. Over much of the internal wave frequency band the slope of the phase rate frequency spectrum is between -0.5 and -1.0. The depth dependence for the mean-square phase rate fluctuation has been found. Largest fluctuations occur for shallow and deep receivers. The predicted fluctuations compare favorably with experimental data.

Description: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2006

Description: Hurricanes, powerful storms with wind speeds that can exceed 80 m/s, are one of the most destructive natural disasters known to man. While current satellite technology has made it possible to effectively detect and track hurricanes, expensive 'hurricanehunting' aircraft are required to accurately classify their destructive power. Here we show that passive undersea acoustic techniques may provide a promising tool for accurately quantifying the destructive power of a hurricane and so may provide a safe and inexpensive alternative to aircraft-based techniques. It is well known that the crashing of wind-driven waves generates underwater noise in the 10 Hz to 10 kHz range. Theoretical and empirical evidence are combined to show that underwater acoustic sensing techniques may be valuable for measuring the wind speed and determining the destructive power of a hurricane. This is done by first developing a model for the acoustic intensity and mutual intensity in an ocean waveguide due to a hurricane and then determining the relationship between local wind speed and underwater acoustic intensity. Acoustic measurements of the underwater noise generated by hurricane Gert are correlated with meteorological data from reconnaissance aircraft and satellites to show that underwater noise intensity between 10 and 50 Hz is approximately proportional to the cube of the local wind speed. From this it is shown that it should be feasible to accurately measure the local wind speed and quantify the destructive power of a hurricane if its eye wall passes directly over a single underwater acoustic sensor. The potential advantages and disadvantages of the proposed acoustic method are weighed against those of currently employed techniques. It has also long been known that hurricanes generate microseisms in the 0.1 to 0.6 Hz frequency range through the non-linear interaction of ocean surface waves. Here we model microseisms generated by the spatially inhomogeneous waves of a hurricane with the non-linear wave equation where a second-order acoustic field is created by first-order ocean surface wave motion. We account for the propagation of microseismic noise through range-dependent waveguide environments from the deep ocean to a receiver on land. We compare estimates based on the ocean surface wave field measured in hurricane Bonnie with seismic measurements from Florida.

Description: Finally, I am grateful to have been awarded the Office of Naval Research Graduate Traineeship Award in Ocean Acoustics. I also thank the MIT Sea Grant office for funding portions of this research.

Description: In 1947 the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution organized an expedition to investigate the bottom sediments and oceanography of the northwest Gulf of Mexico. The Geological Society of America contributed to the support of this undertaking with grants in aid from the Penrose fund. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists through its Executive and Research committees offcially endorsed the expedition. The main objective was to investigate the environmental conditions of deposition of the sediments in the offshore waters more than 10 fathoms in depth in order to throw light on the oceanography of the northwest part of the Gulf of Mexico and to develop ecological criteria that would benefit geologists in their efforts to determine the conditions of deposition of ancient sediments deposited in the geologic past in adjacent areas.