The Naval Seafloor Evolution Architecture: A Platform for Predicting Dynamic Seafloor Roughness

TL;DR

The paper introduces NSEA, a modular platform that predicts seafloor roughness dynamics by integrating hydrodynamic forcing and observations, with applications in hydrodynamic and acoustic modeling.

Contribution

It presents a novel, flexible architecture for modeling seafloor evolution, capable of forward and inverse predictions with demonstrated accuracy.

Findings

Good agreement with observed seafloor roughness data

Accurate prediction of sediment grain size

Modular design facilitates integration with other models

Abstract

Predicting the temporal and spatial dynamics of seafloor roughness is important for understanding bottom boundary layer hydrodynamics. The Navy Seafloor Evolution Architecture (NSEA) is a platform for modeling the dynamic nature of the seafloor by combining hydrodynamic forcing information and observations from diverse sources. NSEA's three modules include a specification of hydrodynamic forcing, a seafloor evolution model, and a model to generate roughness realizations. It can be run in forward mode to predict seafloor roughness including the uncertainty from forcing information, or in inverse mode to estimate parameters from observed seafloor roughness. The model is demonstrated and shown to have good agreement with a field dataset of observed seafloor roughness. Similarly running in inverse mode, NSEA was demonstrated to predict the observed mean sediment grain size with good agreement. NSEA's modularity allows for a wide range of applications in hydrodynamic and acoustic modeling, and is built within an expandable framework that lends for coupling to such models with minimal effort.