Patos Lagoon Estuary and Adjacent Marine Coastal Biodiversity Long-term data

Abstract

Abstract. Estuaries are among the most productive aquatic ecosystems and provide important ecological and economic services in coastal areas. However, estuarine systems have been threatened worldwide by natural and anthropogenic impacts acting on local, regional and global scales. Long-term ecological studies contribute to the understanding and management of estuarine functioning, and provide the baseline information for detection changes and modeling of predictive scenarios. Here, we describe long-term data on the biodiversity and physico-chemical parameters obtained from 1993 to 2016 for the Patos Lagoon estuary and adjacent marine coast, in southern Brazil. We report eight datasets containing 6,972 sampling events with the occurrence and abundance records of 275 species (Kingdoms: Bacteria, Protozoa, Chromista, Plantae and Animalia) of functional groups plankton, benthos and nekton. Datasets also include 22,190 abiotic records. Database is published in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) repository (see Data availability in Sect 3). The present compendium represents one of the most comprehensive and longest datasets from primary producers to top predators in an estuarine-coastal system in South America and their availability will be an important contribution to the understanding and predictability of estuarine dynamics around the world.

Modelling the distribution of marine fishery resources: Where are we?

“…This trend appears to be related to the easy access and significant availability of data in estuarine/coastal zones (Robinson et al, 2011), in contrast to the more difficult access to aphotic, abyssal and hadal, ocean zones, which limit the number of studies available. For example, the relative proximity to the mainland and the easier and cheaper sampling facilitate access to data by researchers from the Patos Lagoon estuary and the adjacent marine coast (southern Brazil) and, consequently, allow long‐term observations among many taxonomic groups (Lemos et al, 2022). On the other hand, access to deeper areas is scarce, hindering direct observations of both biotic and abiotic data, making it difficult to model the distribution of species, even for those based on presence alone.…”