FN Archimer Export Format PT J TI Santa Maria di Leuca Province (Mediterranean Sea): Identification of Suitable Mounds for Cold-Water Coral Settlement Using Geomorphometric Proxies and Maxent Methods BT AF Bargain, Annaelle Marchese, Fabrice Savini, Alessandra Taviani, Marco Fabri, Marie-Claire AS 1:1;2:2;3:2;4:3,4,5;5:1; FF 1:PDG-ODE-LITTORAL-LERPAC;2:;3:;4:;5:PDG-ODE-LITTORAL-LERPAC; C1 IFREMER, Dept Oceanog & Dynam Ecosyst, La Seyne Sur Mer, France CoNISMa Local Research Unit, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy Istituto di Scienze Marine (ISMAR), CNR, Bologna, Italy Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples, Italy C2 IFREMER, FRANCE UNIV MILANO BICOCCA, ITALY IAMC CNR, ITALY WHOI, USA STAZ ZOOL ANTON DOHRN, ITALY SI TOULON SE PDG-ODE-LITTORAL-LERPAC IN WOS Ifremer jusqu'en 2018 DOAJ copubli-europe copubli-int-hors-europe IF 5.247 TC 21 UR https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00407/51826/52418.pdf https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00407/51826/52419.pdf https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00407/51826/52420.pdf https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00407/51826/52421.pdf https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00407/51826/52422.pdf https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00407/51826/52423.pdf LA English DT Article CR MEDECO BO Pourquoi pas ? DE ;predictive habitat mapping;maxent;cold-water coral;ecological proxies;Santa Maria di Leuca;Mediterranean Sea AB The Santa Maria di Leuca (SML) cold-water coral province (northern Ionian Sea) has the largest occurrence of a living white coral community currently known in the Mediterranean Sea. Madrepora oculata and Lophelia pertusa, identified as marking sensitive habitats of relevance by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean, have been observed heterogeneously distributed on the summits of several mounds. This particularly patchy and uneven distribution in addition to their importance for regional biodiversity highlights the need to better understand their environmental preferences and predict their distribution. Bathymetric data (40 m resolution) was used to derive seafloor characteristics. A fine scale index quantifying the landscape elevation (Bathymetric Position Index at 120 m resolution) was used to select all the elevated features considered as candidate morphologies for potential coral mounds. Statistics on 22 known coral topped mounds were computed. Two statistical methods were then used to identify other potential coral mounds based on predictive variables. The first method, the Geomorphometric proxies method, consists in computing basic statistics of terrain variables, using them for a step-by-step classification in a quantitative approach to select a subset of candidate morphologies. The second method consists in using a predictive Habitat Suitability Model (Maxent model). The Geomorphometric proxies method identified 736 potential coral mounds while the Maxent method predicted 1,252 potential coral mounds. A subset of 517 potential coral mounds was common to both methods. The analysis of the contribution of each variable with the Maxent method showed that the variable “Vector Ruggedness Measure” at a resolution of 5 pixels (200 m) contributed to 53% of the final Maxent model, followed by the “Terrain Texture” index (31%) at a resolution of 11 pixels (440 m). The common potential coral mounds are mainly located in an area characterized by a mass transport deposit, also called the mounds area because of the roughness of the seafloor, in accordance with the high proportional contribution of the noticeable first roughness index to the Maxent model. The results highlight the importance of the global conservation of the entire Province, with white coral probably widespread over the entire 600 km2 SML area. PY 2017 SO Frontiers In Marine Science SN 2296-7745 PU Frontiers Media SA VL 4 IS 338 UT 000457690600336 BP 1 EP 17 DI 10.3389/fmars.2017.00338 ID 51826 ER EF