Acoustic imaging is used to map lost English city

Spectroscopy Now : In 1286 a storm washed a large part of the English town of Dunwich into the North Sea and deposited significant amounts of silt in the mouth of the Dunwich River. Over the next 200 years, further storms continued to silt up the harbor and eat away parts of the city until most of the inhabitants abandoned the area. In the half-millennium since, most of the rest of the city has been washed into the sea. David Sear of Southampton University and his colleagues used high-resolution acoustic imaging technology to map the city’s underwater remains. Primarily used for imaging shipwrecks, the acoustic imaging was necessary because of the generally muddy nature of the water in the area. The imaging revealed that the city covered 1.8 km ², almost the area of present-day London. The coastal erosion that Dunwich experienced was due to storms that occurred during a period of significant global climate change. A better understanding of erosion processes caused by storms may help countries and towns prepare for potential effects of rising oceans and changing weather patterns due to global warming.