Abstract

Habitat Vulnerability of Seagrass Resource to Sea Level Rise (SLR)
Track: Oceans
Authors: Cynthia Meyer, Ruiliang Pu

The seagrass resource is essential to the marine ecosystem. We used geospatial general additive model (GAM) to develop a spatial habitat suitability model (HSM) and evaluate the potential habitat loss from SLR. High resolution bathymetry, water quality, and seagrass data were integrated resulting in the HSM GAM for St. Joseph Sound, FL (Adjusted R2= 0.72, n=134). Based on the predicted SLR (1’-6’), the potential suitable habitat loss ranged from 14 km2 (SLR 1’) to the entire 60 km2 (SLR 6’).