Santa Maria di Leuca Province (Mediterranean Sea): Identification of Suitable Mounds for Cold-Water Coral Settlement Using Geomorphometric Proxies and Maxent Methods
The Santa Maria di Leuca (SML) cold-water coral province (northern Ionian Sea) has the largest occurrence of a living white coral community currently known in the Mediterranean Sea. Madrepora oculata and Lophelia pertusa, identified as marking sensitive habitats of relevance by the General Fisheries...
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:c589a0ee09ac4d478ea5d207f58f11c9 2023-05-15T17:08:50+02:00 Santa Maria di Leuca Province (Mediterranean Sea): Identification of Suitable Mounds for Cold-Water Coral Settlement Using Geomorphometric Proxies and Maxent Methods Annaëlle Bargain Fabio Marchese Alessandra Savini Marco Taviani Marie-Claire Fabri 2017-10-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2017.00338 https://doaj.org/article/c589a0ee09ac4d478ea5d207f58f11c9 EN eng Frontiers Media S.A. http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmars.2017.00338/full https://doaj.org/toc/2296-7745 2296-7745 doi:10.3389/fmars.2017.00338 https://doaj.org/article/c589a0ee09ac4d478ea5d207f58f11c9 Frontiers in Marine Science, Vol 4 (2017) predictive habitat mapping maxent cold-water coral ecological proxies Santa Maria di Leuca Mediterranean Sea Science Q General. Including nature conservation geographical distribution QH1-199.5 article 2017 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2017.00338 2022-12-31T05:21:22Z The Santa Maria di Leuca (SML) cold-water coral province (northern Ionian Sea) has the largest occurrence of a living white coral community currently known in the Mediterranean Sea. Madrepora oculata and Lophelia pertusa, identified as marking sensitive habitats of relevance by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, have been observed heterogeneously distributed on the summits of several mounds. This particularly patchy and uneven distribution in addition to their importance for regional biodiversity highlights the need to better understand their environmental preferences and predict their distribution. Bathymetric data (40 m resolution) was used to derive seafloor characteristics. A fine scale index quantifying the landscape elevation (Bathymetric Position Index at 120 m resolution) was used to select all the elevated features considered as candidate morphologies for potential coral mounds. Statistics on 22 known coral topped mounds were computed. Two statistical methods were then used to identify other potential coral mounds based on predictive variables. The first method, the Geomorphometric proxies method, consists in computing basic statistics of terrain variables, using them for a step-by-step classification in a quantitative approach to select a subset of candidate morphologies. The second method consists in using a predictive Habitat Suitability Model (Maxent model). The Geomorphometric proxies method identified 736 potential coral mounds while the Maxent method predicted 1,252 potential coral mounds. A subset of 517 potential coral mounds was common to both methods. The analysis of the contribution of each variable with the Maxent method showed that the variable “Vector Ruggedness Measure” at a resolution of 5 pixels (200 m) contributed to 53% of the final Maxent model, followed by the “Terrain Texture” index (31%) at a resolution of 11 pixels (440 m). The common potential coral mounds are mainly located in an area characterized by a mass transport deposit, also called the mounds area ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Lophelia pertusa Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Frontiers in Marine Science 4 |
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Open Polar |
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ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
predictive habitat mapping maxent cold-water coral ecological proxies Santa Maria di Leuca Mediterranean Sea Science Q General. Including nature conservation geographical distribution QH1-199.5 |
spellingShingle |
predictive habitat mapping maxent cold-water coral ecological proxies Santa Maria di Leuca Mediterranean Sea Science Q General. Including nature conservation geographical distribution QH1-199.5 Annaëlle Bargain Fabio Marchese Alessandra Savini Marco Taviani Marie-Claire Fabri Santa Maria di Leuca Province (Mediterranean Sea): Identification of Suitable Mounds for Cold-Water Coral Settlement Using Geomorphometric Proxies and Maxent Methods |
topic_facet |
predictive habitat mapping maxent cold-water coral ecological proxies Santa Maria di Leuca Mediterranean Sea Science Q General. Including nature conservation geographical distribution QH1-199.5 |
description |
The Santa Maria di Leuca (SML) cold-water coral province (northern Ionian Sea) has the largest occurrence of a living white coral community currently known in the Mediterranean Sea. Madrepora oculata and Lophelia pertusa, identified as marking sensitive habitats of relevance by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, have been observed heterogeneously distributed on the summits of several mounds. This particularly patchy and uneven distribution in addition to their importance for regional biodiversity highlights the need to better understand their environmental preferences and predict their distribution. Bathymetric data (40 m resolution) was used to derive seafloor characteristics. A fine scale index quantifying the landscape elevation (Bathymetric Position Index at 120 m resolution) was used to select all the elevated features considered as candidate morphologies for potential coral mounds. Statistics on 22 known coral topped mounds were computed. Two statistical methods were then used to identify other potential coral mounds based on predictive variables. The first method, the Geomorphometric proxies method, consists in computing basic statistics of terrain variables, using them for a step-by-step classification in a quantitative approach to select a subset of candidate morphologies. The second method consists in using a predictive Habitat Suitability Model (Maxent model). The Geomorphometric proxies method identified 736 potential coral mounds while the Maxent method predicted 1,252 potential coral mounds. A subset of 517 potential coral mounds was common to both methods. The analysis of the contribution of each variable with the Maxent method showed that the variable “Vector Ruggedness Measure” at a resolution of 5 pixels (200 m) contributed to 53% of the final Maxent model, followed by the “Terrain Texture” index (31%) at a resolution of 11 pixels (440 m). The common potential coral mounds are mainly located in an area characterized by a mass transport deposit, also called the mounds area ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Annaëlle Bargain Fabio Marchese Alessandra Savini Marco Taviani Marie-Claire Fabri |
author_facet |
Annaëlle Bargain Fabio Marchese Alessandra Savini Marco Taviani Marie-Claire Fabri |
author_sort |
Annaëlle Bargain |
title |
Santa Maria di Leuca Province (Mediterranean Sea): Identification of Suitable Mounds for Cold-Water Coral Settlement Using Geomorphometric Proxies and Maxent Methods |
title_short |
Santa Maria di Leuca Province (Mediterranean Sea): Identification of Suitable Mounds for Cold-Water Coral Settlement Using Geomorphometric Proxies and Maxent Methods |
title_full |
Santa Maria di Leuca Province (Mediterranean Sea): Identification of Suitable Mounds for Cold-Water Coral Settlement Using Geomorphometric Proxies and Maxent Methods |
title_fullStr |
Santa Maria di Leuca Province (Mediterranean Sea): Identification of Suitable Mounds for Cold-Water Coral Settlement Using Geomorphometric Proxies and Maxent Methods |
title_full_unstemmed |
Santa Maria di Leuca Province (Mediterranean Sea): Identification of Suitable Mounds for Cold-Water Coral Settlement Using Geomorphometric Proxies and Maxent Methods |
title_sort |
santa maria di leuca province (mediterranean sea): identification of suitable mounds for cold-water coral settlement using geomorphometric proxies and maxent methods |
publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2017.00338 https://doaj.org/article/c589a0ee09ac4d478ea5d207f58f11c9 |
genre |
Lophelia pertusa |
genre_facet |
Lophelia pertusa |
op_source |
Frontiers in Marine Science, Vol 4 (2017) |
op_relation |
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmars.2017.00338/full https://doaj.org/toc/2296-7745 2296-7745 doi:10.3389/fmars.2017.00338 https://doaj.org/article/c589a0ee09ac4d478ea5d207f58f11c9 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2017.00338 |
container_title |
Frontiers in Marine Science |
container_volume |
4 |
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1766064702600773632 |