Description, Analysis, and Prediction of Sea Floor Roughness Using Spectral Models

Description, Analysis and Prediction of Sea-ELoor Roughness Using Spectral Hodels CHRISTOPHER GENE POX A method has been developed which allows a valid statistical model of the variability of oceanic depths to be derived from digital bathymetric soundings. Existing bathymetric contour charts represent lowfrequency, deterministic models of the sea floor. To describe the higher frequency variability, or roughness, of the sea floor requires the development of a valid stochastic model. The statistical model of sea-floor roughness is also a valuable tool for predicting acoustic scattering and in addition contains a wealth of geological information for interpreting deep-sea processes. To allow the variability of depths to be described as a function of scale (spatial frequency), the amplitude spectrum is employed as the fundamental statistic underlying the model. Since the validity of the amplitude spectrum depends upon the assumption of a statistically stationary sample space, a computer algorithm operating in the spatial domain was developed which delineates geographic provinces of limited statistical heterogeneity. Within these provinces, the spectral model