Sponsor
The authors would like to thank the data collectors: Site A data were made available anonymously. Site B data collection was supported by Shell and Crux. Sites C, D, and E data were acquired in the Gulf of Maine with support under the Acoustic and Environmental Observation Network in the NW Atlantic (AEON) project funded by the Office of Naval Research Award No. N00014-20-1-2312. We thank all the captains, ship crew, and science party of the AEON field efforts on the FV Beast of Burden, MV Warren Jr., and RV Connecticut. Sites F–I and K–N data were collected during the Atlantic Deepwater Ecosystem Observatory Network (ADEON) program. We gratefully acknowledge funding provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Environmental Studies Program, Washington, DC, under Contract No. M16PC00003, in partnership with other NOPP funding agencies. Funding for ship time was provided under separate contracts by the Office of Naval Research Code 32. Sites J and O data were collected and provided by Woodside Energy, Ltd. Site P data were collected by Team Whale, DFO Maritimes Passive Acoustic Monitoring Data, Ocean and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Science Branch, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Dartmouth, NS. The test site data from Fig. 11 were collected by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada, Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Center, as part of a project sponsored by the Environmental Studies Research Fund (Project No. 2018-01S.
Published In
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2026
Subjects
Wind Driven Underwater Sound -- modelling, Wind Energy Soundscape modeling
Abstract
Wind-driven breaking waves generate the background sound throughout the ocean. An accurate source level for wind-driven breaking waves is needed for estimating the ambient sound levels needed for sound exposure modeling, environmental assessments, and assessing the detection performance of sonars. Previous models applied a constant roll-off of sound levels at -16 dB/decade at all wind speeds, and these models' source levels were flat at frequencies below ∼1000 Hz due to a lack of measurements. Here, we analyzed 16 long-term archival datasets with limited anthropogenic sound sources to estimate the wind-driven source level down to 100 Hz. We estimated the site-specific areic propagation loss (APL) using a ray-based model and then added the APL to the median received levels at each wind speed to obtain the source level. An equation for the areic dipole source level is provided that increases as wind speed cubed, like most other air-ocean coupling processes. The model may be used to estimate sediment properties (given a wind speed history and measured sound levels) or to estimate wind speeds (given the sediment type and measured sound levels). It is well suited for estimating ambient sound levels from wind for soundscape modeling. An open-source implementation is available.
Rights
© 2026 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
DOI
10.1121/10.0042217
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44436
Publisher
Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Citation Details
Martin, S. B., & Siderius, M. (2026). Estimating sediment properties using a new source level function for wind-driven underwater sound derived from long-term archival data. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 159(1), 300–314.