A regional assessment of cumulative impact mapping on Mediterranean coralligenous outcrops
- 1. Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy; CoNISMa, Piazzale Flaminio 9, 00196 Roma, Italy
- 2. CNR-ISMAR – Institute of Marine Sciences, Venezia, Italy. 3 Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, 34127, Trieste, Italy
- 3. Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, 34127, Trieste, Italy; Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, 80121 Napoli, Italy; CoNISMa, Piazzale Flaminio 9, 00196 Roma, Italy
Description
In the last decade, the ‘Cumulative Pressure and Impact Assessment’ (CPIA) approach emerged as a tool to map expected impacts on marine ecosystems. However, CPIA assumes a linear response of ecosystems to increasing level of cumulative pressure weighting sensitivity to diferent anthropogenic pressures through expert judgement. We applied CPIA to Mediterranean coralligenous outcrops over 1000km of the Italian coastline. Extensive feld surveys were conducted to assess the actual condition of coralligenous assemblages at varying levels of human pressure. As pressure increased, a clear shift from bioconstructors to turf-dominated assemblages was found. The linear model originally assumed for CPIA did not ft the actual relationship between expected cumulative impact versus assemblage degradation. A log-log model, instead, best ftted the data and predicted a diferent map of cumulative impact in the study area able to appreciate the whole range of impact scenarios. Hence, the relative importance of diferent drivers in explaining the observed pattern of degradation was not aligned with weights from the expert opinion. Such fndings stress the need for more incisive eforts to collect empirical evidence on ecosystem-specifc responses to human pressure in order to refne CPIA predictions.
Notes
Files
Bevilacquaetal2018.pdf
Files
(2.6 MB)
Name | Size | Download all |
---|---|---|
md5:7a5784d653247ab181ab72a01d41ec39
|
2.6 MB | Preview Download |