Ecological network analysis with benthic indices to assess ecological and functional status of soft-bottom subtidal habitat in the English Channel
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecosystem Science, Environmental Impacts
- Keywords
- Benthic assessment, global approach, benthic indices, Ecopath model
- Copyright
- © 2018 Raoux et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Ecological network analysis with benthic indices to assess ecological and functional status of soft-bottom subtidal habitat in the English Channel. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26538v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26538v1
Abstract
The eastern part of the English Channel (north-eastern Atlantic) in a megatidal environment is one of the most impacted area in the world wide ocean. To the traditional fish activities and maritime transports with dredging and deposit spoil sediment which impact the ecosystem, aggregate extractions and implementation of offshore wind farms increase the pressures in this shallow epicontinental sea. The soft-bottom sea bed was mainly covered by sandy gravels and gravelly sand located offshore under high tidal currents while medium sand and muddy fine sand were deposit along the coast in area with weak currents. A large number of benthic indices had been recently developed mainly to the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive, but to structural assessment, development of more integrate method such as Ecological Network Analysis with the Ecopath model permit to furnish a functional assessment of the benthic habitats. Several studies in diverse sediment type under human pressures or future activities with reef and protected scenarios within an offshore windfarm permit to evaluate the suitability of structural and functional indices to reveal spatio-temporal statutes and changes of the Ecological Status of the benthic ecosystems
Author Comment
This is an abstract which has been accepted for the WCMB (for abstracts);