TECHNOLOGY AND CODE article
Front. Remote Sens.
Sec. Acoustic Remote Sensing
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsen.2025.1574129
This article is part of the Research TopicMultibeam Echosounder Backscatter: Advances and ApplicationsView all 10 articles
Acoustic Backscatter Processing in GlobeGLOBE: An Open-Source Software for Echosounder Data Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institut Francais de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER), Plouzane, France
- 2Centre de Bretagne, Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer, Plouzane, France
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Modern oceanographic vessels are fitted with different single beam and multibeam echosounders, essential for mapping the seafloor and monitoring the water column to study marine ecosystems and geophysical processes.In order to meet the needs of a wide scientific community and take advantage of large echosounder datasets collected at sea, Ifremer has developed over the past decadeGLOBE (GLobal Oceanographic Bathymetry Explorer) an open-source platform called Globesoftware that implements recommendations and standard from several scientific communities like EMODnet integrates tools for bathymetry, water column, and now advanced seafloor backscatter processing. GLOBE follows standardized formats and methodologies, including the ICES SONAR-netCDF4 standard, and the Geohab Backscatter Working Group. Globe offers recommendations, ensuring interoperability and reproducibility. GLOBE provides a comprehensive tools3D georeferenced environment for visualizing and analyzing echosounder data within a 3D georeferenced environment, that comes together with a suite of analysis tools dedicated to both bathymetry and backscatter processing.The architecture of Globe is well adapted to scientific studies, with a clear separation between processing and display modules, facilitating easy access to algorithms for signal processing and ability to benchmark them on referenceby merging datasets and share them between different communities. Global architecture and modules are presented in details. A specific focus is placed on the capabilities of Globeacquired on different platforms at various spatial and temporal scales. The applicability of GLOBE software for seafloor backscatter data, with the objective to contribute to the Geohab Backscatter Working Group by providing an open-source workflow for processing is presented and compared with existing tools, its use is illustrated with a dataset of multibeam water column and seafloor backscatter processing.acquired by a research vessel and an underwater-vehicle of the French Oceanographic Fleet (FOF) in the Thyrrenian sea.
Keywords: Echosounder, water column, acoustic backscatter, bathymetry, Oceanography, open-source software
Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 30 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Poncelet, Saunier, Gaillot, billant and Berger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cyrille Poncelet, Institut Francais de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER), Plouzane, France
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.