## 3 Results
### Analysis of the Final Intertidal Habitat Prediction Map  
The final prediction map with the distribution of the intertidal habitats in the study area is presented in Figure 4 (see also Figure S5). Figures 5 and 6 show detailed views of the example areas with details for each habitat type. The intertidal flats of the Bijagos Archipelago comprise mostly exposed sediments (83.1%), followed by 11.6% of macroalgae cover (Table 5). Bare sediment sandy habitats had the largest extension (59.1% of the study area), whereas bare sediment mixed habitats were the rarest (1.9%). Areas covered by fiddler crab burrows (sandy or mixed) totalled 22.1% of the study area (and 26.6% of the surface area represented by exposed sediments). Bare sediment areas, macroalgae, and shell beds showed to be related to wetter areas (median water film covers of 30-35%, 30%, and 20%, respectively, within the reference dataset), whereas the FCB sediments and rocks were associated with the dryer areas (median water film cover of 0-5% and 0%, respectively, Table 2). This is further supported by the reflectance of water-related indexes for these habitat types in our training dataset, with higher mean values (indicating higher water or moisture content) observed for the bare sediment areas, macroalgae, and shell beds and lower values for the FCB areas and rocks (Figures 7 and S6). Because the macroalgae areas have high water-film cover, several pixels bordering the intertidal flats seemed to be misclassified as macroalgae. Nevertheless, macroalgae often appear alongside the FCB areas. On average, the FCB areas had overall higher elevations (based on the DEM) than the bare sediment areas (2.42 m vs. 2.33 m). Within both the bare sediment and the FCB areas, there were contradictory patterns when comparing the mean elevations between the sandy and mixed sediments, with the mixed sediments presenting higher elevations in the bare sediment areas, while the sandy sediments were more elevated in the FCB areas (Figure 7). \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Stats**} & **Unfiltered** & **Filtered** \\ \hline \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Overall Accuracy**} & 81.2 & **81.8** \\ \hline Kappa Coefficient & 71.9 & **73.1** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Rocks} & User’s Accuracy & **69.3** & 66.2 \\  & Producer’s Accuracy & 74.2 & **76.6** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Shell beds} & User’s Accuracy & **90.7** & 90.1 \\  & Producer’s Accuracy & 58.5 & **59.6** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Macroalgae} & User’s Accuracy & 84.2 & **88.3** \\  & Producer’s Accuracy & 72.3 & **73.8** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Bare sediment sandy} & User’s Accuracy & 83.8 & 83.8 \\  & Producer’s Accuracy & 93.2 & **93.6** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Bare sediment mixed} & User’s Accuracy & 70.2 & **72.4** \\  & Producer’s Accuracy & 36.1 & **36.7** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Fiddler crab burrow sandy} & User’s Accuracy & 71.1 & **72.3** \\  & Producer’s Accuracy & 75.2 & **75.4** \\ \multirow{2}{*}{Fiddler crab burrow mixed} & User’s Accuracy & 83.5 & **84.0** \\  & Producer’s Accuracy & 72.8 & **75.1** \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: Comparison of independent validation statistics between unfiltered and filtered intertidal habitat distribution maps, produced from the prediction made with the final random forest model with the 14 best predictors. Numbers in bold signal the highest score. Figure 4: Map of the distribution of seven intertidal habitat types of the Bijagös Archipelago, generated with the final random forest model (14 predictors). Figure 5: Detailed view of example areas for rocks, shell beds, and macroalgae habitats, with visual comparison to an equivalent RGB image produced from the same Sentinel-2 image for which predictions were conducted to produce the final map.