Priority areas for research and potential protection of seabed sediment carbon on Canada's continental margin - outputs and associated R code.

This repository contains a shapefile (PA_Shapefile.zip) delineating possible priority areas for research and potential protection of seabed sediment carbon within marine protected and conserved areas (MCAs) on Canada's continental margin. Areas were identified by selecting seabed sediments of high carbon density that lie outside of current MCAs. All areas were then ranked upon: 1) mean carbon density (including estimated uncertainty), 2) total carbon stock (including estimated uncertainty), 3) estimated mean mud content, 4) distance to shore, and 5) the proportion of the area which lies within Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas; with the sum of these 5 rankings taken as a general metric for potential overall priority. All the associated code used for data manipulations, and file construction are also published here. The code file also contains exploratory analyses on the coverage of seabed sediment carbon by designated and proposed MCAs in Canada. Please see the readme file and the associated published paper for further information.