94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
MINI REVIEW article
Front. Remote Sens.
Sec. Acoustic Remote Sensing
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsen.2025.1546280
This article is part of the Research Topic Multibeam Echosounder Backscatter: Advances and Applications View all 5 articles
Multifrequency seafloor acoustic backscatter as a tool for improved biological and geological assessments - updating knowledge, prospects, and challenges
Provisionally accepted
Pedro Menandro 1*
Benjamin Misiuk 2,3
Jens Schneider Von Deimling 4
Alex Cardoso Bastos 5
Craig John Brown 1- 1 Seascape Ecology & Mapping Lab, Departament of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
- 2 Department of Geography, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Memorial University of Newfoundland, John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
- 3 Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
- 4 Institute of Geosciences, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Kiel, Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
- 5 Marine Geosciences Lab (Labogeo), Departamento de Oceanografia e Ecologia, Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo, Vitoria, Brazil
Multibeam echosounders (MBES) have emerged as a primary tool for seafloor mapping over the past three decades. Technological advancements and improved data processing methods have increased the accuracy and spatial resolution of bathymetric measurements, and have also led to the increasing use of MBES backscatter data for seafloor geological and benthic habitat mapping applications. MBES backscatter is now frequently used to characterize habitat for marine flora and fauna, contribute to the development of effective marine spatial planning and management strategies, and generally better classify the seabed. Recently, further technological advances have enabled the acquisition and analysis of backscatter at multiple sonar operating frequencies (multifrequency backscatter), with follow-on potential benefits for improved seafloor characterization and classification. This review focuses on the currently available peer-reviewed papers related to multifrequency seafloor acoustic backscatter, providing a comprehensive summary of the contributions across different benthic environments, setting the stage for related applications and outlining challenges and research directions.
Keywords: Multifrequency backscatter, seafloor mapping, multispectral, Multibeam echosounder, Benthic habitat mapping
Received: 16 Dec 2024; Accepted: 19 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Menandro, Misiuk, Schneider Von Deimling, Bastos and Brown. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Pedro Menandro, Seascape Ecology & Mapping Lab, Departament of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.