2Seabed sediment texture can be mapped by geostatistical prediction from limited 3 direct observations such as grab-samples. A geostatistical model can provide local 4 estimates of the probability of each texture class so the most probable sediment 5 class can be identified at any unsampled location, and the uncertainty of this pre-6 diction can be quantified. In this paper we show, in a case study off the northeast 7 coast of England, how swath bathymetry and backscatter can be incorporated into 8 a geostatistical linear mixed model (LMM) as fixed effects (covariates).
9Parameters of the LMM were estimated by maximum likelihood which allowed 10 us to show that both covariates provided useful information. In a cross-validation,