Aquatic Environment and Biodiversity Annual Review 2012

AEBAR 2012: Marine Biodiversity
invasion of alien species into New Zealand waters is also a real threat, with evidence of nuisance
species already well established 68
A number of inshore marine ecosystems (especially estuaries and other sheltered waters) have been
modified by sediment, contaminants and nutrients derived from human land use activities (Morrison
et al. 2009). Coastal margin development has had a major impact on some inshore marine
communities.
A recent project commissioned by the MPI Aquatic Environment Programme, identifies key threats to
the marine environment (BEN2007-05) is complete and has listed and ranked the top threats to New
Zealand’s marine environment, as perceived by expert opinion. Relevant findings are that the highest
ranking threats are ocean acidification, increasing sea water temperatures and bottom trawling (across
all habitats) and that the most threatened habitats are intertidal reef systems in harbours and estuaries
(MacDiarmid et al. 2012). Ecological risk assessment (ERA) methods have also been reviewed (under
ENV200515, Rowden et al. 2008), and a trial Level 2+ assessment completed on Chatham Rise
seamounts to estimate the relative risk to seamount benthic habitat from bottom trawling (under
ENV200516, Clark et al. 2011). An MPI project (DEE2010-04) has resulted in a new ecological risk
assessment being developed that is tailored for New Zealand deepwater fisheries (Clark et al. in
press).
Projects
ZBD2009-25 Predicting impacts of increasing rates of disturbance on functional diversity in
marine benthic ecosystems. The objectives of this project are to:
1. Further develop landscape/seascapes ecological model of disturbance/recovery dynamics in
marine benthic communities, incorporating habitat connectivity, based on existing model by
Lundquist et al. (2010).
2. Predict impacts of increasing rates of disturbance on rare species abundance, functional
diversity, relative importance of biogenic habitat structure, and ecosystem productivity.
3. Use literature and expert knowledge to quantify rare species abundance, biomass, functional
diversity, habitat structure, and productivity of various successional community types in the
model.
4. Field test predictions of the model in appropriate marine benthic communities where
historical rates of disturbance are known, and benthic communities have been sampled.
The baseline model, incorporating connectivity, has been created in Matlab. Objective 2
(predictions for functional biodiversity based on model) is underway. Some progress has been
made on objective 3 (quantify functional biodiversity from existing data) through familiarisation
of the programmers with the datasets of the Ocean Survey 2020 Chatham/Challenger project
(ZBD2007-01) and biodiversity analyses to date for objective 8 of that project. Objective 4 is in
process, with the majority of the field test funded by BEN2007-01. Researchers from both
projects have met to discuss and modify the draft sampling design in order to best allocate
sampling to test the predictions of the functional diversity model. The field testing took place in
March-April 2010 in Tasman/Golden Bay.
Other research relevant or specifically linked to the projects above, are listed in Table 11.7.
68 http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/biosec/camp-acts/marine
http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pests/salt-freshwater/saltwater
http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/about-us/our-publications/technical-papers
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