In collaboration with four French, Belgian and German geoscience laboratories, iXblue’s Sonar Systems division recently mobilized its SeapiX volumic 3D sonar to image a volcanic lake in the Eifel region (Germany). The main goal was to detect gas bubbles that would help better understand the volcano activity.
The mission was a great success. Remotely controlled at several hundreds of meters, the SeapiX sonar produced water column, bathymetry, as well as fish & gas bubbles images. Different backscatter signatures of elements in the water column clearly allowed to distinguish fish and gas bubbles.
Since SeapiX was used together with a gas probe installed on the lake during the mission for long-term monitoring, it raises great potential to better understand the life cycle of gas generation by combining the acoustic data from two different systems. This also brings new insights for developing automatic gas detection module using the SeapiX Software.
