Normal incidence measurement in a subaqueous sand dune field in the South China Sea.

ABSTRACT

Regions with subaqueous sand dunes have been discovered on the upper continental slope of the northern South China Sea. These large subaqueous sand dunes are expected to cause errors in the measurement of normal incidence reflection. This letter presents experiment results of two normal incidence survey tracks conducted in 2013, and the errors in reflection coefficient estimation and the resulting sediment properties induced by sand dune bedforms. The results demonstrate that the reflected energy is focused and scattered by different parts of sand dune bedforms and that they produce significant variation in the estimated reflection coefficients and the inverted geoacoustic properties.