Development and Application of MB System Software for Bathymetry and Seabed Computation

Abstract

MB-Systems was a useful software tool for mapping the seafloor by processing multibeam bathymetry and bottom backscattering. Multibeam echosounder system was the underwater acoustic technology that used to determine morphology and characteristics of the seabed. The objectives of these research were to produce and describe the map of bathymetry, distribution of seabed backscatter value, beam density distribution, standard deviation of the depth, standard deviation as a percentage of water depth, and also to produce and describe graph of ping interval for each depth. The maps were obtained by using MB-System software after correction of tide, amplitude against grazing angle, sound velocity profile, and 3D editing of swath bathymetry. Implementation of 30 0 as reference angle to both sides of the beam, low pass filtering, and mosaic amplitude were conducted to calculate the backscatter values of their absolute level. By these steps, nadir stripping and outlayer values in the map of seabed backscattering distribution could be eliminated. After computing the whole correction stages, we found depth value of the slope area were 813.59 meters to 4904.71 meters and at the basin area were 723.01 meters to 1065.21 meters depth. The distribution of backscatter values in slope area ranged from -42.37 dB to -4.47 dB and in the basin area were -41.59 dB to -16.63 dB.