De Laender, F.

Deneudt, K.

Everaert, G.

Goethals, P.L.M.

Janssen, C.R.

Open Marine Archive

 - 34 -
SHOULD ANTHROPOGENIC INFLUENCES BE INCORPORATED IN 
MARINE HABITAT SUITABILITY MODELS?  
Everaert Gert1, Frederik De Laender1, Klaas Deneudt2, Peter L.M. Goethals1 and Colin R. Janssen1 
1 Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University, J. Plateaustraat 
22, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium 
E-mail: gert.everaert@ugent.be  
 2 Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), InnovOcean site, Wandelaarkaai 7, B-8400 Ostend, Belgium 
 
Marine habitat suitability models typically predict the potential distribution of organisms based on 
environmental characteristics such as salinity, oxygen concentrations, temperature fluctuations or 
sediment class information. Although the anthropogenic pressure on the marine environment has 
been exponentially increasing during the last century, global effect of human activities on the 
distribution of marine organisms remains largely unknown. This research aims at (1) determining to 
what extent contamination/pollution data can be used to predict the occurrence of marine 
organisms and (2) evaluating whether the incorporation of anthropogenic chemicals in habitat 
suitability models increases the performance of these models. 
 
A suite of habitat suitability models, e.g. Classification and Regression Trees and Generalized Linear 
Models, were used to predict the presence of three marine species from environmental 
characteristics only. Next, the models were extended with ten anthropogenic chemicals as 
additional predictors and it was examined if this extension significantly increased model 
performance.  
 
The modelling techniques proved to be useful to reveal the most important predictors for the 
occurrence of the selected species. The models with the highest performance were those combining 
environmental characteristics with anthropogenic chemicals. We conclude that 
contamination/pollution data increase the performance of habitat suitability models, compared to 
the use of environmental characteristics only. 


Should anthropogenic influences be incorporated in marine habitat suitability models?

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