Abstract:This paper presents a collection of environmental, geophysical, and other marine-related data for marine ecological models and ecological-niche models. It consists of 2132 raster data for 58 distinct parameters at regional and global scales in the ESRI-GRID ASCII format. Most data originally belonged to open data owned by the authors of this article but residing on heterogeneous repositories with different formats and resolutions. Other data were specifically created for the present publication. The collection… Show more
Integrated Environmental Assessment systems and ecosystem models study the links between anthropogenic and climatic pressures on marine ecosystems and help understand how to manage the effects of the unsustainable exploitation of ocean resources. However, these models have long implementation times, data and model interoperability issues and require heterogeneous competencies. Therefore, they would benefit from simplification, automatisation, and enhanced integrability of the underlying models. Artificial Intelligence can help overcome several limitations by speeding up the modelling of crucial functional parts, e.g. estimating the environmental conditions fostering a species’ persistence and proliferation in an area (the species’ ecological niche) and, consequently, its geographical distribution. This paper presents a full-automatic workflow to estimate species’ distributions through statistical and machine learning models. It embeds four ecological niche models with complementary approaches, i.e. Artificial Neural Networks, Maximum Entropy, Support Vector Machines, and AquaMaps. It automatically estimates the optimal model parametrisations and decision thresholds to distinguish between suitable- and unsuitable-habitat locations and combines the models within one ensemble model. Finally, it combines several ensemble models to produce a species richness map (biodiversity index). The software is open-source, Open Science compliant, and available as a Web Processing Service-standardised cloud computing service that enhances efficiency, integrability, cross-domain reusability, and experimental reproduction and repetition. We first assess workflow stability and sensitivity and then demonstrate effectiveness by producing a biodiversity index for the Mediterranean based on $$\sim $$
∼
1500 species data. Moreover, we predict the spread of the invasive Siganus rivulatus in the Mediterranean and its current and future overlap with the native Sarpa salpa under different climate change scenarios.
Integrated Environmental Assessment systems and ecosystem models study the links between anthropogenic and climatic pressures on marine ecosystems and help understand how to manage the effects of the unsustainable exploitation of ocean resources. However, these models have long implementation times, data and model interoperability issues and require heterogeneous competencies. Therefore, they would benefit from simplification, automatisation, and enhanced integrability of the underlying models. Artificial Intelligence can help overcome several limitations by speeding up the modelling of crucial functional parts, e.g. estimating the environmental conditions fostering a species’ persistence and proliferation in an area (the species’ ecological niche) and, consequently, its geographical distribution. This paper presents a full-automatic workflow to estimate species’ distributions through statistical and machine learning models. It embeds four ecological niche models with complementary approaches, i.e. Artificial Neural Networks, Maximum Entropy, Support Vector Machines, and AquaMaps. It automatically estimates the optimal model parametrisations and decision thresholds to distinguish between suitable- and unsuitable-habitat locations and combines the models within one ensemble model. Finally, it combines several ensemble models to produce a species richness map (biodiversity index). The software is open-source, Open Science compliant, and available as a Web Processing Service-standardised cloud computing service that enhances efficiency, integrability, cross-domain reusability, and experimental reproduction and repetition. We first assess workflow stability and sensitivity and then demonstrate effectiveness by producing a biodiversity index for the Mediterranean based on $$\sim $$
∼
1500 species data. Moreover, we predict the spread of the invasive Siganus rivulatus in the Mediterranean and its current and future overlap with the native Sarpa salpa under different climate change scenarios.
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