Estuarine Habitat Assessment for Construction of a Submarine Transmission Line

Abstract

The present paper describes a submarine survey using the acoustic discrimination system QTC VIEW (Series V) as an exploratory tool to adjust final route alignment of a new pipeline. By using acoustic sound survey as an exploratory tool described in this paper to adjust final route alignment of a new pipeline to minimize the environmental impact caused and ultimately to avoid any mitigation measures. The transmission pipeline extended from the shore line of Abu-Qir Bay, on the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt, out to 70 nautical miles at sea (60 m water depth). Four main surface sediment types were defined in the study area, namely fine sand, silty sand, silt and clay. Results of the acoustic classification revealed four acoustic classes. The first acoustic class corresponded to fine sand, absence of shell debris and very poor habitats characteristics. The second acoustic class is predominant in the study area and corresponds to the region occupied by silt. It is also characterized by intermediate diversity of macrobenthic invertebrate community which is mainly characterized by polychaeta. The third acoustic class is characterized by silt to silty clay. It is characterized by a high diversity of macrobenthic invertebrate community which is mainly polychaeta with an intermediate diversity of gastropoda and bivalvia. The final acoustic class is characterized by clay and high occurrence of shell debris of gastropoda, bivalvia and polychaeta.

Petrophysical Evaluation of Wakar Formation, Port Fouad Marine Field, Offshore Nile Delta

“…The Nile Delta is a part of the Egyptian Mediterranean coast with area of about 25000 Km 2 .Its surface slopes gently northwards, where the difference in elevation between its apex in the south and the Mediterranean coast is 18 m (El-Ashry, 1979). The Nile Delta as a petroliferous province is bordered from the south by latitude 30ºN, the Rosetta branch to the west, and the isobath of approximately 50 meters to the north and the Damietta branch to the east (Hamouda and Abdel Salam, 2010).…”

Characteristic properties of seabed fluvial-marine sediments in front of Damietta promontory, Nile Delta, Egypt

“…In the present survey the definition of the extent of acoustic seabed classification is about 2 m (or less) below the seabed. This zone was intended to include biogenic structures directly associated with the seabed characteristics (Hamouda and Abdel-Salam, 2009). The QTC VIEW series V system examines the shape characteristics of the first echo and uses a series of algorithms to translate it to an array of 166 descriptive variables (Collins et al, 2002).…”

Sediment Classification of Acoustic Backscatter Image Based on Stacked Denoising Autoencoder and Modified Extreme Learning Machine

“…The different types of seabed sediments provide important reference information for scientific research via seabed geological surveys, marine engineering construction, marine space planning, and benthic communities [1][2][3][4]. Traditional snapshot sampling and underwater photography are inefficient and costly for sediment classification [5].…”

“…The class numbers represent the sediment category, which are fine silt, median silt, fine sand, median sand, granule, and undetected area 2. The sediment categories of the Z2 area are: silt-clay-sand, sand-silt-clay, silty-clayey sand, sand, gravel sand, and gravelly sand.…”