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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Remote Sens.

Sec. Acoustic Remote Sensing

Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsen.2025.1650603

This article is part of the Research TopicMultibeam Echosounder Backscatter: Advances and ApplicationsView all 12 articles

Assessing the importance of acoustic backscatter and bottom trawling impact as predictor variables for mapping deep sea coral reefs

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Canberra, Australia
  • 2Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, College of Sciences and Engineering, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Seamounts host some of the most biodiverse and vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems, as epitomised by the elevated diversity and biomass of fauna associated with extensive reefs of the frame-work forming coral Solenosmilia variabilis. In places, these vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs) have been substantially impacted by commercial bottom trawl fishing and face increasing threats from climate variability. Understanding both the current and historical distribution of coral reefs enables naturalness and recovery to be considered in conservation planning. Our study on the Tasmanian seamounts, an area characterised by extensive deep-sea coral reefs and historical trawling impacts, employed fine-scale Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) using acoustically derived bathymetry and backscatter data resolved to 15 m resolution to capture fine-scale habitat heterogeneity. We used a two-model methodology to predict VME habitat distributions before and after trawling impacts across a broad region (>480 km²) containing multiple seamounts with peak depths ranging from 720 – 2,073 m and varied substrates, as indicated by a spectrum backscatter intensity values. Bathymetry, relative slope position, backscatter and trawling history were most influential among a suite of predictor variables. Comparison of before and after models showed a reduction in both total area and patch sizes of coral habitat consistent with areas classified as historically impacted by trawling. The reduction in extent of coral VME area was dependent on the probability threshold of habitat suitability used in the model, decreasing by 20.44 – 26.07% following trawling across a range of thresholds from 0.5 – 0.85. Our study highlights the benefits to future spatially based biodiversity management initiatives that will stem from using high-resolution bathymetry and backscatter data, and information on anthropogenic impacts, in SDM predictions.

Keywords: species distribution modelling, Solenosmilia variabilis, Tasmanian seamounts, Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems, Seamount, acoustic backscatter

Received: 20 Jun 2025; Accepted: 04 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Berry, Lucieer, Althaus, Whittaker and Williams. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Christopher Berry, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Canberra, Australia

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