Developing physical surrogates for benthic biodiversity using co-located samples and regression tree models: A conceptual synthesis for a sandy temperate embayment  

Authors / CoAuthors

Huang, Z. | McArthur, M. | Radke, L. | Anderson, T. | Nichol, S.

Abstract

Marine physical and geochemical data can be valuable in predicting the potential distributions and assemblages of marine species, acting as surrogate measures of biodiversity. The results of surrogacy analysis can also be useful for identifying ecological processes that link physical environmental attributes to the distribution of seabed biota. This paper reports the results of a surrogacy study in Jervis Bay, a shallow-water, sandy marine embayment in south-eastern Australia. A wide range of high-resolution co-located physical and biological data were employed, including multibeam bathymetry and backscatter data and their derivatives, parameters that describe seabed sediment and water column physical characteristics, seabed exposure, and infauna species. The study applied three decision tree models and a robust model selection process. The results show that the model performance for three diversity indices and seven out of eight infauna species range from acceptable to good. Important surrogates for infauna diversity and species distributions within the mapped area are broad-scale habitat type, seabed exposure, sediment nutrient status, and seabed rugosity and heterogeneity. The results demonstrate that abiotic environmental parameters of a sandy embayment can be used to effectively predict infauna species distributions and biodiversity patterns. International Journal of Geographical Information Science

Product Type

nonGeographicDataset

eCat Id

71374

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Keywords

• External PublicationScientific Journal Paper

( Theme )

• marine biodiversity

( Theme )

• marine

( Theme )

• CERF

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Earth Sciences

• Published_Internal

Publication Date

2012-01-01T00:00:00

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

Classification - unclassified

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

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notPlanned

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geoscientificInformation

Series Information

26,2141-2160

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The paper was written based on the research results of the CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub.

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CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub