The emplacement of infrastructure on the seabed can change the morphology of the bed, the nature of the flow above it the transport of sediment, and so complicate the assessment of seabed stability for planning and designing offshore renewable infrastructure.

MBES data was acquired in Lulworth Cove, situated on England’s south coast. 2D georeferenced grids were produced for each data product and used alongside ground truth data as input into a random forests (RF) algorithm. Generation, testing, and comparison of multiple models associated with different combinations of data product inputs with varying levels of smoothing provided an indication of the discriminatory power derived from each product. Through consideration of each product’s impact on model performance as well as the known challenges associated with their collection, this study aims to present pragmatic recommendations pertaining to design of an MBES survey for kelp monitoring applications in the UK. Additionally, this study aims to identify existing survey campaigns in the UK that could be leveraged, by virtue of their appropriate survey design (collection of the most valuable data products), to facilitate cost-effective provision of data for monitoring of kelp.

urrently estimated at £500 billion