Predicting the effects of climate change on deep-water coral distribution around New Zealand-Will there be suitable refuges for protection at the end of the 21st century?

ABSTRACT: Deep-water corals are protected in the seas around New Zealand by legislation that prohibits intentional damage and removal, and by marine protected areas where bottom trawling is prohibited. However, these measures do not protect them from the impacts of a changing climate and ocean acidification. To enable adequate future protection from these threats we require knowledge of the present distribution of corals and the environmental conditions that determine their preferred habitat, as well as the likely future changes in these conditions, so that we can identify areas for potential refugia. In this study, we built habitat suitability models for 12 taxa of deep-water corals using a comprehensive set of sample data and predicted present and future seafloor environmental conditions from an e

SUBMITTER: Anderson OF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9804896 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature