Geoacoustic inversions in a very shallow water environment

The genetic algorithm is used to invert the geoacoustic parameters of a near shore, very shallow water region (from 10‐m to 20‐m water depth). The experimental data are source tows in the frequency range from 70 Hz to 700 Hz recorded on a horizontal line array of a 120‐m aperture. The source tows were conducted offshore of Camp Pendleton, north of Oceanside, CA, along range‐independent and range‐dependent bathymetry tracks. Generally, a thin layer of sediment overlies a harder subbottom in this region. An echosounding survey, a sediment coring survey, and regional geologic information are used to develop background geoacoustic models. Inversion results from transmission loss versus range data agree well with the results obtained from inverting complex‐pressure data across the array for a single range.