ORCID

Abstract

Spatial management of the deep sea is challenging due to limited available data on the distribution of species and habitats to support decision making. In the well-studied North Atlantic, predictive models of species distribution and habitat suitability have been used to fill data gaps and support sustainable management. In the South Atlantic and other poorly studied regions, this is not possible due to a massive lack of data. In this study, we investigated whether models constructed in data-rich areas can be used to inform data-poor regions (with otherwise similar environmental conditions). We used a novel model transfer approach to identify to what extent a habitat suitability model for Desmophyllum pertusum reef, built in a data-rich basin (North Atlantic), could be transferred usefully to a data-poor basin (South Atlantic). The transferred model was built using the Maximum Entropy algorithm and constructed with 227 presence and 3064 pseudo-absence points, and 200 m resolution environmental grids. Performance in the transferred region was validated using an independent dataset of D. pertusum presences and absences, with assessments made using both threshold-dependent and -independent metrics. We found that a model for D. pertusum reef fitted to North Atlantic data transferred reasonably well to the South Atlantic basin, with an area under the curve of 0.70. Suitable habitat for D. pertusum reef was predicted on 20 of the assessed 27 features including seamounts. Nationally managed Marine Protected Areas provide significant protection for D. pertusum reef habitat in the region, affording full protection from bottom trawling to 14 of the 20 suitable features. In areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ), we found four seamounts that provided suitable habitat for D. pertusum reef to be at least partially protected from bottom trawling, whilst two did not fall within fisheries closures. There are factors to consider when developing models for transfer including data resolution and predictor type. Nevertheless, the promising results of this application demonstrate that model transfer approaches stand to provide significant contributions to spatial planning processes through provision of new, best available data. This is particularly true for ABNJ and areas that have previously undergone little scientific exploration such as the global south.

Publication Date

2023-11-01

Publication Title

Journal of Environmental Management

Volume

345

ISSN

0301-4797

Acceptance Date

2023-06-03

Deposit Date

2023-07-18

Embargo Period

2023-07-20

Funding

We would like to thank the scientists and crew of all research cruises that have contributed to the collection of the data used in this study. The FAO EAF-Nansen programme was instrumental in providing multibeam bathymetry for the SEAFO Convention Area. Multibeam bathymetry, temperature and biological validation data from within the UKOTs was collected through work led by the British Antarctic Survey, Cefas and National Geographic; we would like to thank the governments of Ascension Island, Saint Helena and Tristan da Cunha for permission to use data from the UKOTs in this study and their general support of the work. Research cruises were funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ‘Blue Belt’ Programme. We would like to also thank the Global Multi-Resolution Topography Data Synthesis for their support in downloading additional multibeam data for ABNJ in the South Atlantic. The temperature data for all casts outside the UKOTs came from the British Oceanographic Data Centre funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.

Keywords

Habitat suitability modelling, Novel approaches, Cold-water coral reef, Marine spatial planning, Model transfer, Area beyond national jurisdiction

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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