WAMSI 2 - Kimberley Node - Project 1.1.1 Environmental Surrogates

The scope of Project 1.1.1 is to assess habitat and species as they relate to the management of the existing and proposed marine parks in State waters. This project will deliver improved understanding of Kimberley seabed habitats, while developing quantitative predictive spatial models to aid in understanding the key drivers behind these patterns and predicting them at a variety of scales within the existing and proposed marine park areas. Broader scale surveys will provide a characterisation of the habitats and benthic species distribution and will contribute to the Kimberley reference collection of biota at the WA Museum, while selected coastal areas will be assessed in much greater detail to inform MPA development in the Kimberley near shore environments. The finer scale work will include, but seeks to move beyond pattern description towards testable models related to processes behind the observed biological patterns.

Project 1.1.1 will centre around ship-based field expeditions with a high discovery element, using towed camera benthic transects, a range of hydro acoustic and optical remote sensing methods and epibenthic sled collections, to deliver fundamental data on the nature and distributions of biota in a broad sense along the Kimberley coast and with greater detail within the existing and proposed marine park areas. Effort will be allocated to sampling representative field locations to characterise the nature and distribution of habitats and identify a substantial proportion of the species encountered and collected in the sled samples

项目1.1.1的研究范畴为评估州管辖海域内现有及拟建海洋公园管理所涉及的栖息地与物种。本项目旨在深化对金伯利（Kimberley）海底栖息地的认知，同时构建定量预测性空间模型，助力解析上述分布格局背后的关键驱动因子，并在现有及拟建海洋公园区域内的多尺度场景下实现分布预测。大范围调查将完成栖息地与底栖（benthic）物种分布的特征刻画，并为西澳大利亚博物馆（WA Museum）的金伯利生物群落参考馆藏提供补充；同时，项目将对选定沿海区域开展更精细化的评估，为金伯利近岸环境的海洋保护区（Marine Protected Area, MPA）建设提供决策支撑。精细化研究环节将不仅止步于格局描述，更致力于构建可验证的模型，以解析观测到的生物格局背后的生态学过程。

项目1.1.1以兼具高探索创新性的船基野外考察为核心，将采用拖曳式相机底栖样带（towed camera benthic transects）、多类水声（hydro acoustic）与光学遥感技术，以及附底拖网（epibenthic sled）采集手段，全面获取金伯利海岸带生物群落的基本属性与分布数据，并在现有及拟建海洋公园区域内完成更精细化的采样工作。项目将合理分配采样资源，选取具有代表性的野外点位开展调查，以刻画栖息地的特征与分布，并鉴定出拖网采集样本中观测到的绝大多数物种。