Benthic marine landscapes of the Eastern Gulf of Finland

Benthic marine landscapes of
the Eastern Gulf of Finland
Anu Kaskela, GTK
Rousi, H., Ronkainen, M., Orlova, M., Kotilainen, A., Ryabchuk, D.,
Gogoberidze,G., Neevin, I., Sergeev, A and Zhamoida, V.
Finnish Environment Institute, Russian State Hydrometeorological University, A.P. Karpinsky
Russian Research Geological Institute, Russia Zoological Institute
Outline
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
TOPCONS Benthic marine lanscapes/ Kaskela et al
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Intro:
•
Information about ecologically valid characteristics and their
distribution to inform marine spatial planning
•
Benthic marine landscapes:
• Roff and Taylor (2000): Geophysical and oceanographical
data enable prediction of species assemblages
• GIS approach: ecologically valid parameters are combined
following a defined hierarchy
• Cost-effective way to describe benthic environment
Transboundary benthic marine landscapes for
the Eastern Gulf of Finland
Benthic= water-substrate interface, or upper layers of sediment
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Benthic Marine landscapes
Who do you ask?
Scientist?
Top-down:
• Salinity
• Substrate
• Photic depth
Species assemblages?
Bottom-up:
• Analyse the benthic data
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Research questions :
• What are
the ecologically significant abiotic
characteristics of the heterogeneous sea area?
• How
these parameters should be classified?
Target group: Benthic assemblages of the EGoF
Enquirers: Team of Finnish and Russian marine
scientists, geologists and biologists
Benthic marine landscapes in GIS environment
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Field surveys
Case study areas represent the
environmental gradients:
– East-West
– Heterogeneity
– Open, Sheltered
• Full coverage acoustic
soundings, MBES
• Bio & Geo sampling
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Ecological data
• Combined Fin-Rus
benthic dataset
• Late summer
conditions
• > 200 sites
(2009-2012)
• Finnish Video data
> 700 points
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Environmental data
Geophysically diverse seafloor
environment
Emphasis of variables
describing physical seabed and
its heterogeneity in multiple
scales
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What are the
ecologically relevant
environmental
parameters?
Marina Orlova, RAS
Minna Ronkainen & Heta Rousi, SYKE
Multivariate statistics to select the combination of variables that
best explain the species community pattern (PRIMER; BEST)
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What are the ecologically relevant
environmental parameters?
Analysis by Orlova, Ronkainen and Rousi, SYKE and RAS
Video vs Benthic data
Benthic: Salinity, Depth, Archipelago gradient,
Seabed heterogeneity (1 ->10 km)
Video: Water transparency at seafloor
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How they should be classified?
LINKTREE hierarchy to identify ecological cut-off values
< Salinity 2.25 <
Cut-off values on
the basis of species
abundance
Archipelago
Complexity
Shallow
Deep
Complex
Intermediate
depth
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Island hotspot
Species enduring hypoxic conditions, such
as chironomid larvae and Marenzelleria
Benthic marine landscapes
delineate about 60 % of
zoobenthic communities
Seabed complexity
 Km scale
 Flat areas: chironomid larvae and
Salinity separates fresh and
brackish waters
Marenzelleria
Complex landscapes: gammaridae,
Macoma balthica, Jaera spp.,
nemertini, Asellus spp. trichoptera and
Saduria entomon
Fresh/brackish species
Neva
Broad-scale process
environment; water mass,
stress?
Depth
Transitions between hydrographic
conditions (e.g. turbidity, light,oxygen)
Most variable zoobenthic
communities in shallow depths
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Discussion and conclusions
• Salinity, Depth, Photic depth
• Broad scale archipelago gradient & seafloor heterogeneity
should be taken into account in future analysis
• Might reflect active processes, like water circulation,
oxic conditions
• Linkage with biodiversity?
• In detail scale or if modeling distribution of certain
species, results are probably different
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Areas of high seabed heterogeneity already taken into account in
Kymenlaakso marine spatial planning process!
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Thank You!
More info:
anu.kaskela@gtk.fi
Project website:
www.merikotka.fi/topcons
Image by Mia Välimäki,
Merikotka, 2013
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