1 1.10 Application of estuarine and coastal classifications in marine ...

inclusion of a wider range of physical factors including sediment composition (grain size and
carbonate content), sediment mobility, water depth and organic flux were able to adequately
characterize macrofaunal distributions (Post et al. 2006). The latter study highlights the
importance of including process-based factors such as sediment mobility in determining patterns
of diversity and individual species distributions, particularly in soft sediment dominated regions.
In many areas, however, the work of assessing the utility of benthic habitat maps as surrogates of
biodiversity or as predictors of species distributions is still in its infancy and is a major pursuit in
the field of marine spatial ecology.
Habitat maps can also be analyzed using landscape ecology concepts and spatial tools to
examine the importance of spatial heterogeneity of the environment including the significance
of seascape composition (distribution, abundance and diversity of patch types) and seascape
configuration or spatial arrangement (the explicit spatial geometry of patches) (Pittman et al.
2004, 2007b, Grober-Dunsmore 2007, 2008). This new approach in marine ecology represents a
shift from a focus on individual habitat patches to a focus on the surrounding seascape mosaic. A
classified map of functionally meaningful seascape types can provide a novel spatial template
with which to frame many important management and ecological questions including the design
of marine protected areas, essential fish habitat and designing optimal restoration projects.
Classified maps also play an important role in forming spatial predictor variables in predictive
mapping of biodiversity and explaining individual species distributions for coral reef ecosystems
(Pittman et al. 2007a; Purkis et al. 2008, Pittman et al. 2009, Knudby et al. 2010) (Figure 1).
1.10.2.1 Classifying and Mapping Seascapes of the Scotian Shelf, NW Atlantic
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