From marine soundscape to environmental assessment – MER CALME

The scientific program MER CALME project comes in five technical tasks, the first one dedicated to developing tools for signal processing to characterize the acoustic landscape of infra-littoral. The four others use these tools to i) make an estimate of passive geoacoustic properties and bathymetry of these environments, ii) characterize the biological activity (its rhythms, its variability, its phenomena pilotants), iii) describe the surface states and weather conditions (wind, precipitation) and iv) finally defining the contribution of human activity in the budget of these sound environments.

The Project MER CALME offers a methodological break in the observation of marine i) focusing on the subtidal zone, ii) by addressing all within the same inversion of the propagation channel and source characterization, physical and biological man to give a single measure from a complete synoptic view of coastal environments, iii) providing a solution for observing the biological compartment, iv) focusing in sessions of continuous measurement of very long periods (ideally permanent).

Over the period 2013, the group has worked to collect and develop a consistent set of data on maritime traffic, biodiversity and anthropogenic impacts. These data were acquired mainly during field campaigns but also with the laboratory experiments.

Here is the works:
Associated with IUEM we deployed hydrophones near the Isle of Molene in Iroise Sea Park. These sensors have remained submerged between July 7 and September 9 for monitoring maritime activity by passive acoustics. Maritime activity was also evaluated by observers posted on Quéménès site and noise associated with vessels was calibrated by geographers lab partner during the last 15 days of August . The data mining is currently underway and will be integrated into the deliverable 4 and 5 (Delphine Mathias) . These data will be supplemented by a recording of the noise in the same area.
We also applied hydrophones at two sites in the harbor of Brest to describe, on maerl beds , the biophonie when a human impact dredging site is null an not null on the oposite. The exploitation of this work is in progress.
Finally , also for the task 3, we had the opportunity to conduct experiments in a controlled environment at the Biological Station ISMER (University of Rimouski, Quebec ) to assess the impact of noise on larval settlement mussel Mytilus edulis , estimating sound production bover the long term due to a change in photosynthesis period , establish sound identity card benthic organisms according to different size ranges (sea urchins , scallops, Nereis , star sea ??crab) . The exploitation of this work is ongoing and will be integrated into the task 3.

Follow research ont the proposed program.
Organization of the Workshop SERENADE 2014

2 journal articles and 6 conference papers were published in the first year in connection with the MER CALME project.

DADOUCHI F., GERVAISE C., IOANA C., HUILLERY J. and MARS J.I., 2013. Automated segmentation of linear time-frequency representation of marine mammal sounds, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 134(3), pp 2546-2555.

BARAZZUTTI A. GERVAISE C., STEPHAN Y., DADOUCHI F. and SESSAREGO J.P., 2013, Inversion Géoacoustique passive en milieux petits fonds à partir de vocalises de cétacés. », Revue Traitement du Signal, accepté

LE BOT O., BONNEL J., MARS J.I., and GERVAISE C, 2013, Odontocetes click train deinterleaving using a single hydrophone and rhythm analysis, 163th Meeting of Acoustical Society of America, ICA2013, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Vol. 19, 2aAB7, p1-8, Montreal, Ca.

LE BOT O et al., 2013, Séparation d'impulsions bio-acoustique par analyse du rythme temps, XXIV Colloque du GRETSI, Brest, 3-6 Septembre 2013, ID267.

MATHIAS, D., GERVAISE C., DI IORIO L. MARS J.I, 2013, Modèle d'assimilation du paysage acoustique pour suivre l'état de l'écosystème marin dans le parc naturel marin d'Iroise, 3ème congrès international des aires marines protégées, Marseille, France (2013)

MATHIAS, D., GERVAISE C., DI IORIO L., 2013, Wind dependence of shallow water ambient noise in a biologically rich temperate coastal area., 166th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 2-6 December 2013, San Francisco,USA

DADOUCHI F., GERVAISE G., IOANA C., HUILLERY J. and MARS J.I., 2013, Time-frequency segmentation : a complementary approach to classical track detection algorithms”, Workshop on Detection, Classification and Localization of Marine Mammals using Passive Acoustics, Saint Andrews, Scotland, June 2013

DADOUCHI F., et al, 2013, Segmentation temps-fréquence statistique : Analyse de la répartition spatiale des détections sur spectrogramme N fois seuillé, XXIV Colloque du GRETSI, Brest, 3-6 Septembre 2013, ID292.

The Project MER CALME addresses the development of a methodology for observing coastal marine environments from the underwater acoustics: from the measurement of acoustic landscapes toward environmental knowledge (biological, geophysical, climatic and anthropogenic). The observation by passive acoustic environments is promising (long-term, high temporal resolution, low cost, non-intrusive, covert, allowing a complete description of the environment) but requires i) development of tools for processing of the measurement and ii) the translation the properties of the signals in terms of environmental knowledge.

Meet these requirements through a multidisciplinary team (Information Science and Ecology / Marine Biology) is the goal of the project which will focus its demonstration of the infra-littoral environments (bathymetry between 0 m and 30 m). Indeed because the latter i) plays a significant role (production of marine biomass, matter cycles, wide variability and high spatio-temporal) and ii) present challenges by producing an acoustic soundscape of extreme richness with various sound contributors (biological, climatic and anthropogenic). The Project MER CALME will operate an experimental campaign conducted in 2011 where three listening stations were deployed for 6 months in the Marine Park Iroise.

The Project MER CALME is a dual use research of particular interest i) for the defense areas "Environment and Geosciences" and "acoustic and electromagnetic waves", ii) fondamental research in information science to the challenges of interpreting marine sound signals, iii) fondamental research in marine ecology by allowing an in situ observation of the behavior of benthic marine organisms and iv) meeting societal expectations in terms of assessing and monitoring the environmental quality of marine habitats.

The scientific program MER CALME project comes in five technical tasks, the first one dedicated to developing tools for signal processing to characterize the acoustic landscape of infra-littoral. The four others use these tools to i) make an estimate of passive geoacoustic properties and bathymetry of these environments, ii) characterize the biological activity (its rhythms, its variability, its phenomena pilotants), iii) describe the surface states and weather conditions (wind, precipitation) and iv) finally defining the contribution of human activity in the budget of these sound environments.

The Project MER CALME offers a methodological break in the observation of marine i) focusing on the subtidal zone, ii) by addressing all within the same inversion of the propagation channel and source characterization, physical and biological man to give a single measure from a complete synoptic view of coastal environments, iii) providing a solution for observing the biological compartment, iv) focusing in sessions of continuous measurement of very long periods (ideally permanent).