Date (Publication)

2014-11-11T20:34:00

Presentation form

Digital model

Purpose

Fine-scale knowledge on the distribution of sensitive habitats such as mäerl beds is crucial for their effective management and conservation. Based on known occurrences of these habitats and a set of environmental predictors, modelling was carried out to produce the first continuous maps of these habitats across the entire basin. The predictive maps can be fed into the development of basin-wide conservation plans (e.g. for establishing networks of marine protected areas) or other forms of marine spatial planning, and also in policy development.

Status

Completed

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre	Corinne Martin	corinne.martin@unep-wcmc.org	Owner

Maintenance and update frequency

Not planned

Theme

• bioconstruction

• m├ñerl

• maerl

• Marine habitat mapping

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

• Habitats and biotopes

Use limitation

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

Use limitation

Viewable and downloadable

Access constraints

License

Use constraints

License

Spatial representation type

Grid

Denominator

200000

Language

eng

Character set

UTF8

Topic category

• Environment

Begin date

2014-05-27T20:39:00

End date

2014-05-27T20:40:00

Supplemental Information

Martin CS, Giannoulaki M, De Leo F, Scardi M, Salomidi M, Knitweiss L, Pace ML, Garofalo G, Gristina M, Ballesteros E, Bavestrello G, Belluscio A, Cebrian E, Gerakaris V, Pergent G., Pergent-Martini C, Schembri PJ, Terribile K, Rizzo L, Ben Souissi J, Bonacorsi M, Guarnieri G, Krzelj M, Macic V, Punzo E, Valavanis V, Fraschetti S (2014) Coralligenous and maerl habitats: predictive modelling to identify their spatial distributions across the Mediterranean Sea. Scientific Reports 4: 5073. URL: http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140527/srep05073/full/srep05073.html

Other cited reference(s):

Giannoulaki M, Belluscio A, Colloca F, Fraschetti S, Scardi M, Smith C, Panayotidis P, Valavanis V, Spedicato MT (Eds.) (2013). Mediterranean Sensitive Habitats (MEDISEH), final project report. DG MARE Specific Contract SI2.600741. Heraklion (Greece): Hellenic Centre for Marine Research. 557 p. URL: mareaproject.net/download/71/

The maps show the predicted occurrence probabilities for coralligenous outcrops and mäerl beds: values 0 and 10 correspond to the lowest (blue colour) and highest (red colour) occurrence probabilities, respectively. Hence, the maps provide information about where the habitats are most likely to occur.

Projection used: World Cylindrical Equal Area with datum WGS 1984.

The work was financed by the Commission of the European Union (Directorate General for Maritime Affairs, DG MARE) through the ÔÇ£Mediterranean Sensitive HabitatsÔÇØ (MEDISEH) project, within the MAREA framework (service contract SI2.600741). Some of the work was also financed through the projects Coconet (FP7, Grant agreement no: 287844) and the projects Prin 2010ÔÇô2011 (MIUR) and RITMARE (MIUR). The authors would also like to express their gratitude to those who kindly shared their occurrence data on coralligenous outcrops and m├ñerl beds, and without whose inputs this work would not have been possible (see Task 1.2 in Giannoulaki et al. 2013).

Geo-referenced occurrence records for coralligenous outcrops and mäerl beds across the Mediterranean basin were compiled as part of two international research projects (Mediseh and CoCoNET). Based on these occurrences and a starting set of 12 environmental variables, maximum entropy (Maxent) was used to model and predict occurrence probabilities. Please refer to Martin et al. (2014) for full details.

Earlier versions of the models were presented in Task 1.3 of Giannoulaki et al. (2013). The predictive maps published in Martin et al. (2014) are based on a more extensive occurrence dataset and more finely-tuned models.

Due to data limitations on species lists across the various component datasets, coralligenous outcrops and mäerl beds were each modelled as a whole, instead of modelling multispecific assemblages with distinct habitat preferences.

Spatial management measures for fisheries that are aimed at protecting coralligenous outcrops and mäerl beds should not be based solely on the model outputs presented here; targeted groundtruthing should be carried out so that informed decisions are taken.

Reference system identifier

WGS 1984

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link	https://www.nature.com/articles/srep05073	MEDISEH modelling report

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download	https://ows.emodnet-seabedhabitats.eu/geoserver/emodnet_open_maplibrary/wcs?SERVICE=WCS&VERSION=2.0.0&REQUEST=GetCoverage&coverageId=emodnet_open_maplibrary:mediseh_maerl

Metadata

File identifier

43c7ac30-04da-479d-b5c1-ba621f0981e4 XML

Metadata language

eng

Character set

UTF8

Date stamp

2022-02-01T16:14:17

Metadata standard name

ISO 19115:2003/19139

Metadata standard version

1.0

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre	Corinne Martin	corinne.martin@unep-wcmc.org	Point of contact