Lagrangian analysis of multi-satellite data in support of open ocean Marine Protected Area design
International audience Compared to ecosystem conservation in territorial seas, protecting the open ocean has peculiar geopolitical,economic and scientific challenges. One of the major obstacle is defining the boundary of an open ocean MarineProtected Area (MPA). In contrast to coastal ecosystems, wh...
Published in: | Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , |
Other Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
HAL CCSD
2017
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://hal.science/hal-01503688 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr2.2016.12.014 |
Summary: | International audience Compared to ecosystem conservation in territorial seas, protecting the open ocean has peculiar geopolitical,economic and scientific challenges. One of the major obstacle is defining the boundary of an open ocean MarineProtected Area (MPA). In contrast to coastal ecosystems, which are mostly constrained by topographicstructures fixed in time, the life of marine organisms in the open ocean is entrained by fluid dynamicalstructures like eddies and fronts, whose lifetime occurs on ecologically-relevant timescales. The position of thesehighly dynamical structures can vary interannually by hundreds of km, and so too will regions identified asecologically relevant such as the foraging areas of marine predators. Thus, the expected foraging locationssuggested from tracking data cannot be directly extrapolated beyond the year in which the data were collected.Here we explore the potential of Lagrangian methods applied to multisatellite data as a support tool for a MPAproposal by focusing on the Crozet archipelago oceanic area (Indian Sector of the Southern Ocean). Bycombining remote sensing with biologging information from a key marine top predator (Eudyptes chrysolophus,or Macaroni penguin) of the Southern Ocean foodweb, we identify a highly dynamic branch of theSubantarctic front as a foraging hotspot. By tracking this feature in historical satellite data (1993–2012) we areable to extrapolate the position of this foraging ground beyond the years in which tracking data are available andstudy its spatial variability. |
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