Surveying in extremely extreme conditions – Dead Sea evaporation ponds

Multi beam echo sounder survey systems have many advantages in surveying inshore and offshore areas, lakes and other water bodies, particularly for navigation and engineering purposes. This article describes a project to determine feasibility of using these systems in a very extreme environment. Hypersaline, high temperature Dead Sea evaporation ponds with very shallow depths were surveyed, along with a portion of a feeder canal with an artificial bottom. Results showed that while some aspects of multi beam hydrographic surveying are impossible to achieve or insignificant, with caution and paying particular attention to certain aspects, it is possible to obtain excellent results. The use of multi beam systems in these shallow ponds is clearly advantageous compared to single beam or real-time kinematic GNSS land surveying.