Acoustic Observation of the Time Dependence of the Roughness of Sandy Seafloors

A statistical model for the time evolution of seafloor roughness due to biological activity is applied to photographic and acoustic data. In this model, the function describing small scale seafloor topography obeys a time-evolution equation with a random forcing term that creates roughness and a diffusion term that degrades roughness. When compared to acoustic data from the 1999 and 2004 Sediment Acoustics Experiments (SAX99 and SAX04), the model yields diffusivities in the range from 3.5 times 10^-11 to 2.5 times 10^-10 m² s^-1 (from 10 to 80 cm² yr^-1), with the larger values occurring at sites where bottom-feeding fish were active. While the experimental results lend support to the model, a more focused experimental and simulation effort is required to test several assumptions intrinsic to the model.