Geoacoustic Inversion for the New Jersey Shelf: 3-D Sediment Model

Abstract

A 3-D model of sediment sound speed for a 90-km <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> area on the New Jersey shelf was constructed by application of a geoacoustic inversion technique. This approach is based on a combination of seismic reflection measurements and a perturbative inversion scheme using horizontal wave number estimates. In a two-step process, seismic reflection measurements were used to identify depths at which discontinuities in the sound-speed profile (SSP) likely occur. Then, the perturbative inversion algorithm made use of this <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">a priori</i> information by employing qualitative regularization, an optimal method for addressing stability and uniqueness issues associated with solving the ill-posed inversion problem that provides for resolution of the layered seabed structure.