A model Of AUV survey feature resolution and error estimation for deployment optimization

Abstract

The marine environment is patchy, that is there are distributions of physical, chemical and biological features that are uneven across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Spatial scales range from the molecular level to thousands of kilometers, under the influence of processes such as diffusion, advection by oceanic currents, animal movement and planetary rotation. Making robust measurements of this patchiness is made significantly more difficult in these anisotropic conditions due to aliasing and irregular encounter rates. Understanding the causes and consequences of marine spatial and temporal variability is an essential step toward a better interpretation of environmental and ecological structure and function and requires careful planning and interpretation of sampling surveys. We present a simulation package for assessing an AUV platform and sensor packages' ability to resolve features of interest in an anisotropic environment and for assessing survey design under differing probabilities of encounter. The simulation code is freely available for download and modification.