2023_programme: Multibeam echosounder as a tool for complex monitoring of underwater faces of tidewater glaciers in the Arctic

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  • Session: 01. Acoustics in polar environments
    Organiser(s): Jaroslaw Tegowski, Philippe Blondel and Hanne Sagen
  • Lecture: Multibeam echosounder as a tool for complex monitoring of underwater faces of tidewater glaciers in the Arctic
    Paper ID: 2017
    Author(s): Kruss Aleksandra, Walczowski Waldemar, Wieczorek Piotr, Strzelewicz Agnieszka
    Presenter: Kruss Aleksandra
    Abstract: Glaciers are important indicators of global warming and dynamic environmental change in the Arctic. Their monitoring is crucial for the proper estimation of freshwater discharge to oceans. Tidewater glaciers, those terminating at sea, are far more dynamic compared to their land cousins. They characterize by fast flow at their toe and highly contribute to ice loss through calving and submarine melt. The underwater melting of tidewater glaciers and their evolution on the ocean-ice interface is still difficult to understand because most of the time we are missing a full picture of what is happening underwater.\nSatellites are commonly used for mapping glaciers but they cannot penetrate the water and image submarine glacier faces. Some experiments were done in the past using side-scan sonar for that purpose but the results were not very accurate. Modern multibeam sonars provide high-resolution data but mapping vertical structures is still a difficult task. However, recent developments in underwater acoustics technology allow for overcoming this problem.\nBetween 2014 and 2018 we conducted 4 expeditions during summer to map glaciers around Hornsund fjord (Svalbard Archipelago) using NORBIT multibeam sonar. The advanced technology of electronic beam steering of MBES results in the complete mapping of underwater glacier faces from the bottom to the surface in a very quick and efficient way. \nIn this paper, we present the results of using a high-frequency multibeam echosounder for mapping the geometry of tidewater glaciers face with unprecedented details, together with bathymetry of their basins and detection of sediment plumes and gas seeps in the water column.
      Download the full paper
  • Corresponding author: Dr Aleksandra Kruss
    Affiliation: NORBIT Poland
    Country: Poland
    e-mail:

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