Spatial distribution of megabenthic communities and associated diversity in Cap de Creus continental shelf and submarine canyon (NW Mediterranean)

in 2014, the continental shelf and submarine canyon off cap de creus (nw mediterranean) were included in the site of community importance (sci) “south-west gulf of lions canyons system” of the natura 2000 network of protected areas. before the declaration of the sci (2007-2103), 60 underwater video transects were performed in the area by means of rovs and a manned submersible, covering more than 30 km of seafloor. based on the annotation of the video images, we identified the main invertebrate megabenthic communities dwelling from the shelf (70 m depth) down to the bottom of the canyon head (400 m depth). the results of the multivariate analyses indicated that this marine area hosted several benthic communities dominated by suspension- and filter-feeding species, including octocoral gardens, soft-coral assemblages, crinoid fields, sponge grounds and cold-water corals. this dataset includes (1) the geographical location of the benthic communities identified in the video footage, as determined by the clustering analysis, (2) the intra-community diversity associated to the benthic communities, provided as the number of megafauna species identified in each sampling unit and the exponential of shannon, and (3) the spatial distribution of the benthic communities mapped by means of the random forest classification algorithm. this dataset is related to the article “diversity, structure and spatial distribution of megabenthic communities in cap de creus continental shelf and submarine canyon (nw mediterranean)” submitted to progress in oceanography by dominguez-carrió et al., which contains further information on how the data were obtained and processed.

于2014年，位于北西地中海的Cap de Creus大陆架及其海底峡谷被纳入Natura 2000保护区域网络中“狮子湾西南峡谷系统”的社区重要区域（SCI）。在社区重要区域（SCI）的宣告（2007-2013）之前，该区域通过遥控水下航行器（ROV）和载人潜水器进行了60次水下视频横断面调查，覆盖了超过30公里的海底。基于视频图像的标注，我们识别出了从大陆架（70米深度）到峡谷头部底部（400米深度）栖息的主要无脊椎动物大型底栖群落。多元统计分析的结果显示，该海洋区域拥有多个底栖群落，主要由悬浮和过滤摄食物种组成，包括八放珊瑚园、软珊瑚群、海百合草原、海绵地以及冷水珊瑚。本数据集包括：（1）根据聚类分析确定的底栖群落地理定位；（2）与底栖群落相关的群落内多样性，以每个采样单元中识别出的巨型动物物种数量和香农指数的指数形式提供；（3）通过随机森林分类算法绘制的底栖群落空间分布图。此数据集与Dominguez-Carrío等作者提交给《海洋学进展》的文章“Cap de Creus大陆架及其海底峡谷（北西地中海）大型底栖群落的多样性、结构和空间分布”相关，其中包含有关数据获取和处理的更多信息。