Mesophotic zone as buffer for biodiversity protection: A promising opportunity to enhance MPA effectiveness
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Coastal areas conservation strategies often left deeper habitats, such as mesophotic ones, unprotected and exposed to anthropogenic activities. In this context, an approach for including the mesophotic zone inside protection plans is proposed, considering 27 Italian Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as a model. MPAs were classified considering their bathymetries, exposure to marine heat waves (MHWs), mass mortality events (MMEs) and, using a local ecological knowledge (LEK) approach, the estimated resilience of certain sessile species after MMEs. Only 8 MPAs contained considerable mesophotic areas, with stronger MHWs mainly occurring in shallower MPAs, and MMEs mostly affecting coralligenous assemblages. Even with only a 10% response rate, the LEK approach provided useful information on the resilience of certain species, allowing us to suggest that the presence of nearby mesophotic areas can help shallower habitats facing climate change, thus making the "deep refugia" hypothesis, usually related to tropical habitats, applicable also for the Mediterranean Sea.
Source: Marine Environmental Research
Language: English
Subfield: Oceanography
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,340
Funders: European Commission, European Geosciences Union, Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, Ministry of Science,Technology and Research, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning, HORIZON EUROPE Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, Spanish National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation, Interreg
OpenAlex ID: W4401529247