Author(s)

G W Hein, J L Almazan Garate & T Schueler

Abstract

Precise monitoring of changes of the sea bottom is of safety and economical interest, especially in the coastal areas near beaches which are vital elements of a well-working touristic infrastructure and, as a consequence, need proper preservation. Bathymetric systems up till now have only used differential pseudorange observations to the Global Positioning System (GPS), thus resulting only in accuracies in the meter range. Within the last years a very precise bathymetric system was built up by the teams at the two universities in Madrid and Munich using an accurate dual-frequency echosounder as well as precise carrier phases of a differential dual-frequency GPS system which, in principle, is suitable can deliver centimetre accuracies for the sea-bottom and for repeated track monitoring. The paper presents in detail the system built-up. Various repeated measurement campaigns were carried out at coastal areas near beaches in Malaga and Marbella, Spain. A detailed error analysis shows the capabilities of the bathymetric system. 1 Introduction Navigation has been a main Spanish activity in the past and tourism is a main activity nowadays, being Spain the third country in the world in touristic importance. Tourism is one of Spain's most important economic engines, and this is in a very important way due to the more than 2.000 km of beaches honoured with exceptional weather conditions with many hours of sunshine a

Keywords