Acoustic characterisation of benthic habitats in Hornsund fjord (the Svalbard Archipelago)

• Main Authors: Kruss, A., Tegowski, J., Wiktor, J., Tatarek, A., Olenin, S., Daunys, D., Gorska, N., Klusek, Z.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2006
• Subjects: benthic habitats; Hornsund fjord; acoustic characterisation; biotic environment; ecosystem; morphodynamic process; Arctic; Svalbard; Svalbard Archipelago; Hornsund
• Online Access: http://ku.lvb.lt/KU:ELABAPDB2429452&prefLang=en_US

This paper presents results of a study on the spatial distribution and biomass of macrophytobentos in Arctic Svalbard fjords. Hornsund Fjord represents a periglacial environment with great intensity of morphodynamic processes and rapidly progressing changes in the biotic environment, which makes it one of the most promising areas to research the climate impact on the ecosystem. Simultaneously, side-scan sonar and single beam echosounder registration, video recording and biological sampling were done for the classification algorithm development and verification. Segmentation and classification algorithm is based on the two-dimensional discrete wavelet decomposition of echo signals and fuzzy c-means data clustering.