Highly Diverse, Poorly Studied and Uniquely Threatened by Climate Change: An Assessment of Marine Biodiversity on South Georgia's Continental Shelf
Figure 4
Marine Biodiversity over spatial scale.
South Georgia data is denoted by filled black squares and presented in the format of 0.25×0.25° grid squares randomised through 999 iterations. Each successive point represents a doubling in shelf area from (1) a single 0.25×0.25° grid square, through to (2) the entire South Georgia Shelf. The combined biodiversity data from the South Georgian shelf and the South Orkney Islands (Barnes et. al. 2009), is represented by the filled grey square, point 3. Data for comparison was obtained from Barnes et. al. (2009) and includes biodiversity sampling from Reunion (Reu), Mauritius (Mus), Rodrigues (Rod), and South Africa (SAfr). Sampling from the Russian arctic seas (Sirenko et al., 2001) is denoted by two tone diamonds. Grey circles denote data presented by Barnes et. al. (2009) for the South Orkney Islands, the first point representing biodiversity recorded from a randomly selected single trawl. Subsequent points record species richness for the entire BIOPEARL 1 expedition, total biodiversity for the South Orkney Islands (SOI) and finally reported species richness for the whole Southern Ocean (Clarke & Johnston, 2003).