Landsat-derived environmental factors to describe habitat preferences and spatiotemporal distribution of zooplankton in La Paz Bay, Mexico

• Published in: Regional studies in marine science 2024-04, Vol.71, p.103380, Article 103380
• Main Authors: Martínez-Rincón, Raúl O., Lora-Cabrera, Yutzil, Morales-Zárate, María Verónica, Suárez-Morales, Eduardo, Mendoza-Becerril, María A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Microscale (30 m); Spatial prediction; Species distribution models; Zooplankton functional groups
• ISSN: 2352-4855; 2352-4855
• DOI: 10.1016/j.rsma.2024.103380

This study applied Generalized Additive Models (GAM) to describe the effect of environmental factors on the abundance and spatial distribution of selected zooplankton groups from a small bay of northwestern Mexico. GAM results show that deviance explained for all selected groups ranged from 26 to 95%, with bivalves and cladocerans being the groups with the highest deviance explained. According to models, amphipods, bivalves, cladocerans, cnidarians, copepods, and appendicularians are most abundant at temperatures below 24ºC, unlike gastropods and ichthyoplankton. Ichthyoplankton, chaetognaths, and appendicularians are expected to show the highest abundance when chlorophyll-a values exceed 0.4 mg*m−3. A higher abundance of most groups is expected at pH values below eight and salinities over 36 PSU. Little effect of chlorophyll-a values was observed for other zooplankton groups. Results of this work suggest that the method used herein can help describe and infer general environmental preferences of zooplankton groups and their spatial distribution in the surveyed system. Additionally, models developed in this study and the full-time series of Landsat 8 (2013 – to date) could be used to describe the spatiotemporal variability of selected zooplankton groups in the last decade. •Variables derived from Landsat were used to predict zooplankton distribution.•The spatial distribution of zooplankton groups was predicted at microscale resolution.•High spatial heterogeneity was found in the spatial distribution of the zooplankton group.