Authors / CoAuthors
Huang, Z. | McArthur, M. | Przeslawski, R. | Nichol, S. | Brooke, B.
Abstract
A key component of marine bioregional planning is to map the spatial patterns of marine biodiversity, often measured as species richness, total abundance or abundance/presence of key taxa. In this study, predictive modelling approaches were used to map soft bottom benthic biodiversity on the Carnarvon Shelf, Western Australia, using a range of physical surrogates. This surrogacy approach could also explicitly link physical environmental attributes to the marine biodiversity patterns. The statistical results show that between 20% and 37% of variances on the two biodiversity measures (Species Richness and Total Abundance) were explained by the Random Forest Decision Tree models. The best statistical validation performance was found at the Point Cloates area. This was followed by the Gnaraloo area, then by the Mandu Creek area. The models identified different individual physical surrogates for the three study areas and the two biodiversity measures. However, it was found that the infaunal biodiversity at the three study areas of the Carnarvon Shelf were driven by similar ecological process. Sediment properties were the most important physical surrogates for the infaunal biodiversity. Coarser and heterogeneous sediments favour higher infaunal species richness and total abundance. The prediction maps indicate the highest infaunal biodiversity at deeper water of the Point Cloates area. In contrast, the majority of the Mandu creek area has low infaunal biodiversity. This may be due to the much narrower shelf width (e.g., ~6 km) in this part of Carnarvon Shelf than the Point Cloates and Gnaraloo areas. The narrow shelf would limit the space for oceanographic processes to work on the sediment and develop heterogeneous sediment properties that support diverse and productive infaunal species.
Product Type
nonGeographicDataset
eCat Id
74013
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Custodian
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Cnr Jerrabomberra Ave and Hindmarsh Dr GPO Box 378
Canberra
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2601
Australia
Keywords
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- External PublicationArticle
- ( Theme )
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- marine biodiversity
- ( Theme )
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- model
- ( Theme )
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- marine
- Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)
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- Earth Sciences
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- Published_Internal
Publication Date
2012-04-23T00:00:00
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geoscientificInformation
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Source Information
CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub