Estimating an upper bound to particle size in sediment populations

A sediment-size measure based on an estimate of an upper-size bound is suggested as a useful alternative to the largest sample observation. Two estimation procedures are described which are compatible with the usual sediment sampling techniques that yield very large samples of unknown and variable size. One method requires only the first two order statistics from a single sample, while the other uses the maxima from a number of samples and estimates the upper bound as the location parameter of a Weibull distribution. In the latter case it is shown that the effect of random sample size can be overcome provided the expected sample size is sufficiently large.