From echo envelopes to substrate maps: Unsupervised seabed classification using single-beam sonar on the northwestern Black Sea shelf
Journal: Regional Studies in Marine Science
Year: 2026

Accurate seabed substrate mapping is essential for marine spatial planning, benthic habitat characterization, and infrastructure routing, yet traditional ground-truthing methods remain costly and spatially limited. We demonstrate a cost-effective workflow for regional-scale substrate mapping using single-beam echo sounder (SBES) data on the northwestern Black Sea shelf. During a June 2019 survey across three polygons (~700 km²) adjacent to major Ukrainian ports, we collected approximately 230,00