INFOMAR Seabed Substrate

The integrated Mapping for the Sustainable Development of Ireland’s Marine Resource (INFOMAR) programme is a joint venture between the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) and the Marine Institute (MI). The programme is the successor to the Irish National Seabed Survey (INSS) and concentrates on creating integrated mapping products related to the seabed.

Acoustic classes corresponding to different sediment types were extracted from the Backscatter data using various methods: image segmentation, isoclustering and manual tracings. Acoustic classes were classified into seabed substrate types using sediment sample data. A modified Folk classification scheme was used for the sediment classification and is displayed in the attribute field “INF_Class” of the associated shapefile.