| Title | Applying modelled broad scale habitat maps in MPA network evaluations - the western Mediterranean Sea case study |
| Download | Download (whole publication) |
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| Licence | Please note the adoption of the Open Government Licence - Canada
supersedes any previous licences. |
| Author | Agnesi, S; Annunziatellis, A; Mo, G; Reker, J |
| Source | Program and abstracts: 2017 GeoHab Conference, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada; by Todd, B J ; Brown, C J; Lacharité, M; Gazzola, V; McCormack, E; Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 8295, 2017 p. 32, https://doi.org/10.4095/305402  Open Access |
| Links | GeoHab 2017
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| Year | 2017 |
| Publisher | Natural Resources Canada |
| Meeting | 2017 GeoHab: Marine Geological and Biological Habitat Mapping; Dartmouth, NS; CA; May 1-4, 2017 |
| Document | open file |
| Lang. | English |
| Media | on-line; digital |
| Related | This publication is contained in Program and abstracts: 2017
GeoHab Conference, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada |
| File format | pdf |
| Subjects | mapping techniques; oceanography; marine environments; conservation; marine organisms; marine ecology; resource management; models; Biology; Environmental protection |
| Illustrations | bar graphs |
| Program | Offshore Geoscience |
| Released | 2017 09 26 |
| Abstract | Over the last decades global, European and regional policy drivers have called on countries to establish networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) as instruments for protection of marine biodiversity.
These policies also require the evaluation of the exerted protection effort against specific criteria (e.g. coverage) and targets with respect to the extension of marine biodiversity elements, such as marine habitats. A pan-European map presenting
the distribution of modeled broad scale seabed habitats has been recently made available through the EMODnet projecta.
The present case study illustrates the usefulness of the EMODnet habitat map in evaluating the 2009-2015 trend in MPA network
coverage of seabed habitats in the north-western Mediterranean Sea. An MPA network layer, containing sites whose protection objectives include benthic habitats, was created by querying the 2009 and 2015 versions of the following reported cartographic
databases: (i) European inventory of nationally designated areas - CDDA; (ii) Natura 2000; (iii) Barcelona convention SPAMIs. All sites were merged and dissolved to avoid overlaps in the MPA layer. Extraction of the modeled habitat surface areas
contained in the network was analyzed for each year against the coverage targets advocated by the Convention on Biological Diversity and the EU Habitats Directive. There is decreasing habitat coverage in the network as depth progresses and bathyal
and abyssal habitats fall below of the 10% coverage (see figure). This trend can be attributed to the limited deep sea protection objectives of some of the environmental policies. All of the infralittoral and most circalittoral habitats reached the
10% target by 2015 while only half of the circalittoral habitats reached the 20% target by 2015. |
| Summary | (Plain Language Summary, not published)
The sixteenth annual GeoHab Conference was held this year (2017) at the Waterfront Campus of the Nova Scotia Community College in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia,
Canada. |
| GEOSCAN ID | 305402 |
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