R. D. Stoll
Lamont--Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY 10964
J. Ewing
Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst., Woods Hole, MA 02543
T. Akal
SACLANT Undersea Res. Ctr, LaSpezia, Italy
Over the past decade a number of new techniques have been developed for measuring the geoacoustic properties of seafloor sediments. Several of these methods utilize sensors that are deployed on the seafloor and respond to seismic waves generated by different kinds of source including explosives and mechanical impact as well as the ambient pressure fluctuations generated by wave motion at the sea surface. Since the motion that is sensed at the seafloor is a combination of many different kinds of interface and body waves (i.e., Scholte waves, Love waves, p, s[sub v], and s[sub h] refractions and reflections, etc.), inversion to obtain a geoacoustic model is a complex task that must be tailored to each individual experiment taking into account the bandwidth of the signal and the interaction between the various types of wave. This paper summarizes some of the recent field experiments and the methods that are being used to interpret the data. [Work supported by ONR codes 1125OA and 1125GG.]