An overview on the use of backscattered sound for measuring suspended particle size and concentration profiles in non-cohesive inorganic sediment transport studies

•An overview on the application of acoustics to suspended sediment measurements.•Simplifications of the main formulation for obtaining suspended sediment parameters from acoustic backscatter data.•An assessment of the impact of systematic and random errors on acoustic estimates of suspended size and concentration.•An examination of the acoustic estimate of particle size.

For over two decades, coastal marine scientists studying boundary layer sediment transport processes have been using, and developing, the application of sound for high temporal–spatial resolution measurements of suspended particle size and concentration profiles. To extract the suspended sediment parameters from the acoustic data requires an understanding of the interaction of sound with a suspension of sediments and an inversion methodology. This understanding is distributed around journals in a number of scientific fields and there is no single article that succinctly draws together the different components. In the present work the aim is to provide an overview on the acoustic approach to measuring suspended sediment parameters and assess its application in the study of non-cohesive inorganic suspended sediment transport processes.