Identification of seafloor provinces - specific applications at the deep-sea HÃ ¥kon Mosby Mud Volcano and the North Sea

The identification of distinct provinces is currently an emphasis of marine research geosciences. Typological approaches for the HÃ ¥kon Mosby Mud Volcano and the North Sea combining geological, biological and chemical properties are accomplished by geostatistical, multivariate statistical, and GIS techniques. Besides scientific needs seafloor provinces support management decisions related to upcoming economic use of the seafloor and bear up to model spatio-temporal connections and changes of coastal regions.Submarine mud volcanoes are considered as source locations for methane indicated by unique communities as Beggiatoa and pogonophorans. They signify graduated CH4 consumption of microbial consortia (sulphate-reducing bacteria and anaerobic methane-oxidising archaea). The quantification of the habitat areas identified by indicator kriging is thus important for understanding the global methane cycle.Kriging methods were also applied for selected parameters for the North Sea creating surface maps from measured data as an assumption for multivariate statistics like Classification and Regression Trees.