ROBUST DESCRIPTION OF STATISTICALLY HETEROGENEOUS SEAFLOOR TOPOGRAPHY THROUGH ITS SLOPE DISTRIBUTION

Statistical heterogeneity of abyssal hill properties is often evident in seafloor topography, even under periods of relatively constant spreading direction and rate. In this paper we relate the statistics of topographic slopes computed on finite spatial scales to the autocovariance function and investigate the practicality of using these functions in describing such heterogeneous abyssal hill terrains. Slope statistics are useful in deriving a more robust estimate of the autocovariance than the usual sample autocovariance. Moreover, slope statistics may also be used to derive stable estimates of quantities not measurable with the autocovariance function or power spectra, such as the statistical asymmetry of features. -from Authors