%0 Journal Article %J Marine Ecology Progress Series %D 2014 %T Understanding community-habitat associations of temperate reef fishes using fine-resolution bathymetric measures of physical structure %A Cameron, M.J %A Vanessa L Lucieer %A Neville Barrett %A Craig R. Johnson %A Graham J. Edgar %K Bathymetric derivatives %K Fish-habitat relationships %K Physical structure %K remote sensing %K Temperate reefs %X

Multibeam sonar (MBS) hydro-acoustic technology allows for inexpensive, broad-scale, fine-resolution assessment of marine fish habitats. Parallel advancements in geographic information systems and new analytical techniques are providing researchers with the ability to generate informative surrogate predictors of biodiversity and species responses. The aim of this study was to determine whether fine-scale bathymetric derivatives of MBS survey data could be effectively applied as surrogates to explain spatial patterns in reef fish diversity and species-habitat relationships. In the absence of direct metrics of habitat, these derivatives might prove to be effective tools for marine spatial planning. Species-habitat relationships were examined across a marine reserve on the south-eastern coast of Tasmania at fine spatial scales using boosted regression tree analyses. The most important explanatory variables of community diversity were those describing the degree of reef aspect deviation from east and south (seemingly as a proxy for swell exposure), reef bathymetry (depth), plane and slope. Models could account for up to 30% of the spatial variability in measures of species diversity. Responses in species abundance and occurrence to habitat structure appeared to be largely species-specific at the scales investigated. Models accounted for up to 67% and 58% of the abundance and occurrence, respectively, for the southern hulafish Trachinops caudimaculatus. Our results demonstrate that multibeam-derived metrics of reef habitat structure, employed in combination with modern modelling approaches, have the potential to explain and predict fine-resolution patterns in temperate reef fish community structure. This knowledge is urgently required to effectively manage marine ecosystems and conserve biodiversity and fisheries resources.
 

%B Marine Ecology Progress Series %V 506 %P 213 - 229 %G eng %U http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v506/p213-229/ %! Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. %R 10.3354/meps10788 %0 Journal Article %J Ecological Applications %D 2012 %T Multi-scale marine biodiversity patterns inferred efficiently from habitat image processing %A Camille Mellin %A Parrott, Lael %A Serge Andréfouët %A Bradshaw, Corey %A Aaron M MacNeil %A M Julian Caley %K Australia %K Biodiversity %K coral reef fish %K ecological indicators %K Great Barrier Reef %K Landsat %K mean information gain %K multilevel mixed-effects model %K photography %K remote sensing %K spectral signal. %X

Cost-effective proxies of biodiversity and species abundance, applicable across
a range of spatial scales, are needed for setting conservation priorities and planning action. We
outline a rapid, efficient, and low-cost measure of spectral signal from digital habitat images
that, being an effective proxy for habitat complexity, correlates with species diversity and
requires little image processing or interpretation. We validated this method for coral reefs of
the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia, across a range of spatial scales (1 m to 10 km), using
digital photographs of benthic communities at the transect scale and high-resolution Landsat
satellite images at the reef scale. We calculated an index of image-derived spatial
heterogeneity, the mean information gain (MIG), for each scale and related it to univariate
(species richness and total abundance summed across species) and multivariate (species
abundance matrix) measures of fish community structure, using two techniques that account
for the hierarchical structure of the data: hierarchical (mixed-effect) linear models and
distance-based partial redundancy analysis. Over the length and breadth of the GBR, MIG
alone explained up to 29% of deviance in fish species richness, 33% in total fish abundance,
and 25% in fish community structure at multiple scales, thus demonstrating the possibility of
easily and rapidly exploiting spatial information contained in digital images to complement
existing methods for inferring diversity and abundance patterns among fish communities.
Thus, the spectral signal of unprocessed remotely sensed images provides an efficient and lowcost
way to optimize the design of surveys used in conservation planning. In data-sparse
situations, this simple approach also offers a viable method for rapid assessment of potential
local biodiversity, particularly where there is little local capacity in terms of skills or resources
for mounting in-depth biodiversity surveys.

%B Ecological Applications %V 22 %P 792 - 803 %8 01 Apr 2012 %U http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/11-2105.1 %N 3 %! Ecological Applications %R 10.1890/11-2105.1