EARS Buoy Applications by LADC: 3D Airgun Source Characterization and Propagation
Speaker: Arslan Tashmukhambetov
2009 SGS University Earth Science Award Recipient
Department of Physics, UNO
atashmuk@uno.edu
Biography:
Arslan M. Tashmukhambetov was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 1980. He attended Kazakh State University, earning a B.S. degree in Physics in May 2003. After graduation he attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, graduating in May 2005 with an M.S. degree in Applied Physics. In June 2005 he entered the Engineering and Applied Science Ph.D. Program at the University of New Orleans as a student based in the Department of Physics. Beginning in May 2003 he has been continuously working first as a graduate research assistant and now as a post-doctoral research associate with participants of the LADC (Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center) group. He was awarded SEG scholarships for two consecutive years and he was given SGS scholarships twice. He earned his Ph.D. in Engineering and Applied Science from UNO in August, 2009. His dissertation is titled “Experimental Design, Data Analysis, and Modeling for Characterizing the Three-Dimensional Acoustic Field of a Seismic Airgun Array”.
Abstract:
The Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center (LADC) was formed as a consortium of scientists in 2001 to study ambient noise, acoustic propagation, and marine mammal acoustics in shallow water using Environmental Acoustic Recording System (EARS) buoys. The consortium now includes scientists from the University of New Orleans, the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the Applied Research Laboratories of the University of Texas at Austin, the Naval Research Laboratory at Stennis Space Center (NRL-Stennis), and the Naval Oceanographic Office at Stennis (NAVOCEANO). Other scientists have been associated for specific projects. In September 2007 LADC conducted an experiment in the northwest Gulf of Mexico to measure the three-dimensional acoustic field of the primary arrival from a seismic airgun array. The water depth was approximately 1500 m. The acoustic measurements were made by Generation 2 4-channel EARS buoys developed by NAVOCEANO, with each channel capable of measuring to 25 kHz. A total of 48 hydrophones were deployed on 3 moorings at 20 different depths. At each depth there was a sensitive and desensitized phone, the latter used to prevent clipping. Eight hydrophones (four pairs) were ship-deployed near the surface. A dedicated source ship, the M/V Fairfield ENDEAVOR, supplied almost all the shots, although the M/V Veritas VANTAGE, which was conducting a survey in the area, provided a few lines of opportunity. The M/V CAPE HATTERAS was used to deploy, manage, and recover the receiving hydrophone arrays, as well as to conduct all environmental measurements. It also deployed and provided communication and control for the Ultra Short BaseLine Localization (USBL) system and a single Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), which were used to give accurate hydrophone positions during the experiment. About 3.5 TB of data were collected.