Tiger sharks support the characterization of the world's largest seagrass ecosystem.

ABSTRACT: Seagrass conservation is critical for mitigating climate change due to the large stocks of carbon they sequester in the seafloor. However, effective conservation and its potential to provide nature-based solutions to climate change is hindered by major uncertainties regarding seagrass extent and distribution. Here, we describe the characterization of the world's largest seagrass ecosystem, located in The Bahamas. We integrate existing spatial estimates with an updated empirical remote sensing product and perform extensive ground-truthing of seafloor with 2,542 diver surveys across remote sensing tiles. We also leverage seafloor assessments and movement data obtained from instrument-equipped tiger sharks, which have strong fidelity to seagrass ecosystems, to augment and further validate pre

SUBMITTER: Gallagher AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9626626 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature