Mapping the vulnerability of animal community to pressure in marine systems: disentangling pressure types and integrating their impact from the individual to the community level

• Published in: ICES Journal of Marine Science
• Main Authors: Certain, Grégoire, Jorgensen, Lis Lindahl, Christel, Isadora, Planque, Benjamin, Bretagnolle, Vincent
• Other Authors: Tromsø department (IMR), Institute of Marine Research Bergen (IMR), University of Bergen (UiB)-University of Bergen (UiB), Department of Animal Biology (Institute for Research on Biodiversity (IRBio)), University of Barcelona, Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé - UMR 7372 (CEBC), Université de La Rochelle (ULR)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2015
• Subjects: Barents Sea; Bay of Biscay; benthos; community; pressure; seabird; trawling; vulnerability assessment; wind farm; [SDE]Environmental Sciences
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01305527; https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsv003

International audience Assessing the vulnerability of biological communities to anthropic pressures in marine systems may be challenging because of the difficulty to properlymodeleach species’ response to the pressure due to lack of information.One solution is to apply factor-mediated vulnerability assessment whichcombines (i) informationonspecies ecological traits and conservationstatus organizedin amatrix of so-called “vulnerability factors”, (ii) a conceptualmodel of how these factors affect species vulnerability, and (iii) data on the spatial distribution and abundance of each species issued from at-seasurveys. Such factor-mediated vulnerability assessment was originally introduced in the seabird–wind farm context by Garthe and Hu¨ppop (2004.Scaling possible adverse effects of marine wind farms on seabirds: developing and applying a vulnerability index. Journal of Applied Ecology, 41: 724–734) and has since then been expanded to many case studies. However, the mathematical formulations that were proposed at that time are overlysimplistic and may overlook critical components of the impact assessment. Our study briefly reviews the original approach and highlights its hiddenassumptions and associated interpretation problems, for example, the overestimation of disturbance pressure to the detriment of collision, or thevery high contribution of log abundances in vulnerability maps. Then, we propose a revised framework that solves these issues and permits easytransposition to other community-pressure case studies. To illustrate the usefulness and generality of the revised framework, we apply it to twocase studies, one concerning the vulnerability assessment of a seabird community to offshore wind farms in the Bay of Biscay, and another focusingon the vulnerability assessment of the benthic megafauna community to trawling pressure in the Barents Sea.