Enhancement of seafloor maps for mecklenburg bay, baltic sea, using proxy variables

Abstract

A common situation in the earth sciences is the unfortunate availability of data in inverse abundance to needs. The geostatistical method of cokriging is used here to address the situation of lack of measurement for geophysical and geotechnical characteristics of the seafloor of the Baltic, where, in contrast, there is abundant information about the bathymetry and the granulometry of the seafloor sediments. New maps for porosity, bulk density, grain density, p-wave velocity, acoustic impedance, and critical shear stress velocity show consistency among themselves and good agreement with old maps prepared with direct measurements, but covering about one third of the total area of interest. These maps show seafloor properties controlled by the effect of erosion and redeposition of glacial tills that have resulted in the accumulation of sediments of decreasing coarseness from coastal areas to a depocenter in the middle of an embayment. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.