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Potential Distribution of Seagrass Meadows Based on the MaxEnt Model in Chinese Coastal Waters

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Abstract

Seagrass meadows are generally diverse in China and have become important ecosystem with essential functions. However, the seagrass distribution across the seawaters of China has not been evaluated, and the magnitude and direction of changes in seagrass meadows remain unclear. This study aimed to provide a nationwide seagrass distribution map and explore the dynamic changes in seagrass population under global climate change. Simulation studies were performed using the modeling software MaxEnt with 58961 occurrence records and 27 marine environmental variables to predict the potential distribution of seagrasses and calculate the area. Seven environmental variables were excluded from the modeling processes based on a correlation analysis to ensure predicted suitability. The predicted area was 790.09 km2, which is much larger than the known seagrass distribution in China (87.65 km2). By 2100, the suitable habitat of seagrass will shift northwest and increase to 923.62 km2. Models of the sum of the individual family under-predicted the national distribution of seagrasses and consistently showed a downward trend in the future. Out of all environmental variables, physical parameters (e.g., depth, land distance, and sea surface temperature) contributed the most in predicting seagrass distributions, and nutrients (e.g., nitrate, phosphate) ranked among the key influential predictors for habitat suitability in our study area. This study is the first effort to fill a gap in understanding the distribution of seagrasses in China. Further studies using modeling and biological/ecological approaches are warranted.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2019YFC1408405-02), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 6207070555), and the Youth Foundation of the Shandong Academy of Sciences (No. 2019QN0026).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for High Performance Computing and System Simulation, Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266200, China

    Ming Wang, Yong Wang & Yuhu Chen

  2. Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Computer Networks, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan, 250101, China

    Guangliang Liu & Naijing Yu

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  1. Ming Wang
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  2. Yong Wang
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  3. Guangliang Liu
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  4. Yuhu Chen
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Correspondence to Ming Wang.

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Wang, M., Wang, Y., Liu, G. et al. Potential Distribution of Seagrass Meadows Based on the MaxEnt Model in Chinese Coastal Waters. J. Ocean Univ. China 21, 1351–1361 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-022-5006-2

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