A statistical interpretation of acoustic backscatter and laser responses to suspended particle variations in the coastal shelf

In this work, a method of identifying distinct suspended sediment populations in terms of concentration and particle size distribution (PSD) is proposed, based solely on the statistical analysis of ADCP acoustic backscatter. The initial hypothesis is stated as that statistically distinct ADCP acoustic responses correspond to statistically distinct associations of suspended sediment concentration and PSD. To prove this, k-means cluster analysis was applied to three different ADCP acoustic backscatter datasets and the resulting partitions characterized in terms of suspended sediment concentration and PSD using simultaneous LISST measurements. All three dataset partitions yielded three similar populations of suspended sediments, which are statistically significantly different between them, proving the initial hypothesis true for the analyzed datasets.