BOOK REVIEW

Roger Parkinson (ed.), High Resolution Site Surveys, Taylor and Francis Books,2000. £75.

Marine High Resolution Geophysical Surveying is a field undergoing rapid changeand development. Site surveys of ever increasing horizontal and vertical resolutionare becoming expected prior to oil and gas field development, in environmentalassessment, in defence-related work, in marine archaeology, and before and duringcable-laying for the telecommunications industry. The latest technology utilisessub-bottom profilers, swath bathymetry, sidescan and magnetometer instrumentson autonomous underwater vehicles.

Roger Parkinson provides a highly personal snapshot of marine geophysicalsite surveys in the 1990’s. It is written very much from an end-users stand-point,and it has the definite advantage that it is not, and does not try to be an academictext. It covers all the main geophysical techniques – multichannel seismics, high-resolution profilers, sidescan sonars, gravity and magnetics, as well as coveringpositioning systems in some detail. There is a Chapter on marine safety, which Ithink is an important aspect for all marine geophysical surveyors, particularly forthose using relatively small vessels.

The book provides an overview of typical site surveys and the techniques used.The description of each technique borrows heavily from manufacturer manuals,and tends to be rather uncritical of some the claims associated with particularsystems. Some of the technical material will undoubtedly date very quickly (e.g.“The 486 CPU . . . ”), and thus the book will have a limited useful life.

There are some eccentricities within the book, the most major concerns theauthor’s division of ‘analogue’ from ‘digital’ systems, the former apparently be-ing single or few channel devices, the latter being multichannel. The inclusionof modern swath bathymetry systems and sub-bottom profiling systems, both ofwhich require sophisticated digital signal processing, under a chapter on ‘analoguesystems’ is rather surprising. The book does cover the main survey techniques, butthere are some major omissions. The increasing use (and abuse) of remote seabeddiscrimination techniques is not mentioned, and the discussion of sub-bottomprofilers is rather cursory.

In summary, this text is aimed at active marine geophysical surveyors who wishto gain a broad overview of practicalities in the industry as it presently is. The text is

Surveys in Geophysics 23: 91–92, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

92 BOOK REVIEW

definitely not “an indispensable guide to the student” and cannot be recommendedas a teaching resource, as it is too inconsistent and uncritical.

JON BULLSouthampton Oceanography Centre

SouthamptonU.K.