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Hydroacoustic experiments to establish a method for the determination of methane bubble fluxes at cold seeps

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Abstract

Hydroacoustic methods are particularly suitable for investigations of the occurrence, cyclicity and amount of bubbles released at cold seeps without disturbing them. Experiments with a horizontally looking single beam transducer (40 and 300 kHz) directed towards artificially produced bubbles show that the backscattering strength of the bubbles increases with the gas flux rate independently of the bubble radii distribution. It is demonstrated that an acoustic system can be calibrated in such a way that gas flux rates of bubble-size spectra, as observed at natural seeps, can be directly related to the echo level of a known, acoustically insonified volume. No system-specific parameters have to be known except the beam width.

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Acknowledgments

We thank our colleagues at FWG (R. Jacobsen and M. Krüger) and GEOMAR (E. Sauter, S. Grandel, C. Jung) for their enthusiasm during the experiments, visual bubble-size measurements (M. Müller) and useful input (E. Hütten). We also thank Y. Artemov and A.G. Judd for critical and helpful comments in their reviews. Financial support for the development of the GasQuant system was provided by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Bonn, by grant 03G0565. This is publication GEOTECH-36 of the program GEOTECHNOLOGIEN of the BMBF and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz-Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR), Wischhofstrasse 1–3, 24148 Kiel, Germany

    J. Greinert

  2. Federal Armed Forces Underwater Acoustics and Marine Geophysics Research Institute, Klausdorfer Weg 2–24, 24148 Kiel, Germany

    B. Nützel

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  1. J. Greinert
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Correspondence to J. Greinert.

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Greinert, J., Nützel, B. Hydroacoustic experiments to establish a method for the determination of methane bubble fluxes at cold seeps. Geo-Mar Lett 24, 75–85 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-003-0165-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-003-0165-7

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