Updated Digital Bathymetric Model of Pomorie and Burgas Bay, Bulgarian Black Sea

Abstract

Recently, the echosounder systems in the Bulgarian Black Sea shelf have become a standard method of seabed exploration. The paper presents the present-day field activity of bathymetric research, which revised available hydrographic data for the seabed. The study aims to combine and update archival bathymetric data from contemporary multibeam echo-sounding scanning and archive single-beam data. This work presents activity in the second stage of Project �Multidisciplinary study of Burgas Bay � MidBay. (Composition of a detailed digital model of the bottom relief with analysis of modern geomorphological conditions and archaeological forecasting modelling)� with a primary scientific goal to create an overall bathymetric model of the Burgas and Pomorie bays. The studied bay is strongly anthropogenically modified by the port in its southern part. The reconstruction of seafloor topography will allow the detection of substrate varieties and the identification of contemporary geomorphological bedforms and processes. A historical review of hydrographic research and geo base database was created for the seabed of the Bulgarian coastal zone in support of this study with different-year bathymetric surveys. The used data consolidate sonar mosaics, single beam, multibeam bathymetric data and raster satellite images, processed in PDS 2000, SonarWiz, and GIS environment. The coverage and density of the bathymetric data allowed the generation of a seabed digital bathymetric model with a horizontal resolution of 11 m. In addition, a bathymetric map with an interval of 0.5 m was created with high accuracy. Such a high-resolution model is an important advance in the highresolution mapping of the Bulgarian Black Sea coastal zone.