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Abstract
In the nowadays highly pressurized marine environment, a science‐based approach to management becomes increasingly important. In many cases, the sediment nature and processes are the key to the understanding of the marine ecosystem, and can explain particularly the presence of soft‐substrata habitats. For predictions of the occurrence of species and habitats, detailed sedimentological information is required. This paper presents a methodology to create high quality sedimentological data grids of grain‐size fractions and the percentage of silt‐clay. Based on a multibeam bathymetry terrain model, multiple sources of secondary information (multi‐scale terrain variables) were derived. Through the use of the geostatistical technique, Kriging with an external drift (KED), this secondary information was used to assist in the interpolation of the sedimentological data. For comparison purposes, the more commonly used Ordinary Kriging technique was also applied. Validation indices indicated that KED gave better results for all of the maps.
Acknowledgements
This paper is part of the PhD research of the first author, financed by the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation through Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT‐Vlaanderen). It contributes also to the EU INTERREGIIIB project MESH (‘Development of a framework for Mapping European Seabed Habitats’). In addition, it frames into the research objectives of the project MAREBASSE (‘Management, Research and Budgeting of Aggregates in Shelf Seas related to End‐users’, Belgian Science Policy, SPSDII, contract EV/02/18A). The sedisurf@ database has been compiled at the Renard Centre of Marine Geology and consists of data from various institutes. Tomislav Hengl is acknowledged for his contribution to the R‐gstat computation.