Marine Environmental similarity analysis for the prediction of Ulva habitat

Abstract

To support the sampling site selection of Ulva in Korean coastal region, marine environmental similarity analysis and GIS mapping were performed as preliminary study. NIBR (National Institute of Biological Resources) surveyed the habitat location of Ulva L. consist of nine species existing Korean coastal region in 2007. NFRDI (National Fisheries Research & Development Institute) has been monitoring marine environmental conditions seasonally at 325 stations in 64 regions in the whole Korean coastal area since 1992. In this study, marine environmental data consist of seawater temperature, salinity, DO, pH, DIN, DIP monitored for five years (2003 - 2007) were used for the environmental similarity analysis. Based on the Ulva appearance information, marine environmental similarity was analysed using Primer v.6 and for the exploratory data analysis and mapping the environmental condition were performed by using ArcGIS. For the regional analysis, marine environmental data and Ulva appearance information were integrated into at each 64 spatial regions using GIS overlay function. And marine environmental relative similarity was calculated by normalized Euclidean distance method with 24 environmental factors (6 items, 4 seasons), and then triangular matrix of similarities between every pair of samples (64 regions) were created. The relationship between relative similarity index and Ulva appearance numbers was significantly correlated ( r = 0.44, p<0.000 at alpha = 0.05). According to these preliminary study result, marine environmental relative similarity index could be used to predict Ulva habitat for the biomass sampling site selection.