The use of the relationships between environmental factors and benthic macrofaunal distribution in the establishment of a baseline for coastal management

Abstract

Dutertre, M., Hamon D., Chevalier C., and Ehrhold, A. 2013. The use of the relationships between environmental factors and benthic macrofaunal distribution in the establishment of a baseline for coastal management – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 70: 294–308. Relationships between benthic macrofauna and natural abiotic factors were studied along the coastal fringe of South Brittany, situated north of the Gulf of Biscay on the French Atlantic continental shelf. Within the framework of the REBENT network, sediment characteristics, depth, and macrofaunal abundance were determined for 95 stations spread over five subtidal sectors, using a combination of seabed acoustic remote sensing systems and grab sampling. The physico-chemical properties of the water column and the hydrodynamic conditions were generated by validated three-dimensional environmental models which take into account variations over shorter temporal scales. Multivariate analyses ranked 16 natural abiotic variables according to the significance of their influence on the macrofauna. Together these variables explained 51% of spatial variation in the macrofauna, with morpho-sedimentological and hydrological factors contributing 22% and 26%, respectively. The outputs from validated three-dimensional environmental models appear to be useful interpretational tools for benthic ecology studies, especially in estuarine and coastal ecosystems with high environmental variability due to regular freshwater inputs. Ten major species assemblages were identified using biological and physical characteristics. The results provide important baseline knowledge for future ecosystem and resource management.

Hydrodynamic conditioning of diversity and functional traits in subtidal estuarine macrozoobenthic communities

“…The results demonstrate that spatially explicit information on hydrodynamics may be used for the prediction of such stress to macrofauna species and communities. This corroborates earlier studies that have included model predictions of tidal currents in habitat mapping, such as Warwick and Uncles (1980) for Bristol Channel, Dutertre et al (2013) for South Brittany and Schückel et al (2015) for the Wadden Sea. Exact relationships and the importance of other variables such as sediment grain-size, organic matter and water depth, however, may depend on the community attributes, site and spatial scale.…”

Top-Down Regulation, Climate and Multi-Decadal Changes in Coastal Zoobenthos Communities in Two Baltic Sea Areas

“…The function and structure of coastal zoobenthos communities are suggested to be mainly governed by local conditions [6]–[8], generally being highly sensitive to low oxygen conditions and other eutrophication related effects, reviewed in [9]. In addition, hydrographical factors, such as water temperature and salinity levels as well as freshwater run-off, and sediment quality and structure have been identified as of importance in explaining variation in zoobenthos community structure [6], [8], [10]–[12].…”

Methodical recommendations for the description of soft bottom communities in the littoral zone

“…Most studies proceed more by custom and tradition than by careful consideration of potential biases and problems inherent in sampling different organisms (Andrew & Mapstone 1987). In many cases, the description of the distribution patterns of living organisms is based on information collected in two or three replicates, and sometimes only one (Solyanko et al 2011;Dutertre et al 2013;Chikina et al 2014). In particular, during the monitoring of the Keret Archipelago (the White Sea) by community organizations at the Department of Ichthyology andHydrobiology (1983-2003), five-replicate sampling was used to increase the statistical accuracy of the data.…”