One of the most active areas of research in acoustical oceanography has been the study of seabed acoustics. This has been partly motivated by the need for accurate sonar performance prediction, which often depends on knowledge of the seabed properties. There has also been significant research on environmentally adaptive and model based signal processing such as matched field processing. One of the obstacles to model based processing has been the required knowledge about seabed properties, which is needed as input. This dependency, in part, led to the innovation of matched field inversion methods to obtain seabed properties. In recent years, new algorithms have been introduced that use ambient noise (e.g., from breaking waves) as a surrogate sound source to probe the seabed and estimate geoacoustic properties. These noise methods have received much attention since measurements and processing are simple and the results are surprisingly good. In fact, current developments in noise processing may be the key to enabling model based methods that, in the past, were not considered practical. In this presentation a review of seabed inversion methods will be given with discussion about current developments in noise processing and the potential for renewed interest in model based processing.