Ecological classification by predictive modeling of macroinvertebrate‐ and SPI‐data in Norwegian coastal waters

Summary

The introduction of the EU’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), the establishments of marine protected areas, climatic changes and more intensive use of coastal areas, necessitate a more cost‐efficient and large scale mapping and monitoring of presence and changes of marine species and habitats. We will present state models of soft sediment communities from grab samples, explained by data from SPI‐ and drop camera in addition to geophysical models of exposure, bathymetry, and its derivatives. In our work mapping marine sediment habitats and fauna, the use of predictive modelling has been crucial. For the statistical analyses we used GAM models and the GIS work were performed in ArcView 9.3.