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A comparison of different techniques for mapping cetacean habitats 2014

Abstract

Article 11 of the Habitats Directive places an obligation for Member States to undertake surveillance on the conservation status of all cetacean species occurring in their waters and to report on this every six years. The aim of the Habitats Directive is that listed species and habitats achieve and maintain a favourable conservation status (FCS). The FCS, as defined by the Habitats Directive, is measured primarily by assessing changes in three elements: natural range, population size and habitat.

An extensive visual and acoustic dataset on harbour porpoises west of Scotland, collected between 2003 and 2008, was used as a test bed for investigating the effectiveness of various analytical methods to provide information on habitat use. Methods used were geospatial analysis (kriging), presence-only analysis (MAXENT), Generalised Linear Modelling (GLM), Generalised Additive Modelling (GAM) and Generalised Estimating Equations (GEEs). The full dataset (visual and acoustic) was subsetted to generate data that were more sparse and had an uneven spatial distribution of effort.

The aim of this report was that these effort scenarios would provide some indication of how the models coped with relatively small, large, even and uneven-spread effort. However, some datasets for other species are much smaller and further work is required to explore the extent to which statistical modelling can help describe the habitat use of such species. The intention was that the findings of this pilot study will provide the first stage in informing the distribution/habitat modelling of cetacean species in UK waters, to build towards providing the best information for FCS reporting in 2013.

Resource type Publication

Topic category Biota

Reference date 2014··

Citation
Boot, C.G. & Hammon, P.S. 2014. A comparison of different techniques for mapping cetacean habitats. JNCC Report No. 482, JNCC, Peterborough, ISSN 0963-8091.

Lineage
This report was based on an extensive visual and acoustic dataset on harbour porpoises west of Scotland, collected between 2003 and 2008, which was used as a test bed for investigating the effectiveness of various analytical methods to provide information on habitat use.

Responsible organisation
Communications, JNCC publisher

Limitations on public access No limitations

Use constraints Available under the Open Government Licence 3.0

Metadata date 2020·07·21

Metadata point of contact
Communications, JNCC

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