17 Species Distribution Indicators

Description: Species mean depth, along-shelf distance, and distance to coastline

Indicator family:

Contributor(s): Kevin Friedland, Brandon Beltz

Affiliations: NEFSC

17.1 Introduction to Indicator

Distribution shifts for a suite of 48 commercially or ecologically important fish species were evaluated using center of gravity metrics based on NEFSC bottom trawl survey data.

Along-shelf distance is a metric for quantifying the distribution of a species through time along the axis of the US Northeast Continental Shelf, which extends northeastward from the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Once mean distance is found, depth of occurrence and distance to coastline can be calculated for each species’ positional center.

17.2 Key Results and Visualizations

The center of distribution for a suite of 48 commercially or ecologically important fish species along the entire Northeast Shelf continues to show movement towards the northeast and generally into deeper water.

17.2.1 MidAtlantic

17.2.2 NewEngland

#> [1] "This is a shelfwide indicator only used in the MidAtlantic report"
#> [1] "This is a shelfwide indicator only used in the MidAtlantic report"

17.3 Indicator statistics

Spatial scale: Shelfwide

Temporal scale: Annual

Synthesis Theme:

17.4 Implications

Temperature change is a major driver of changing fish distributions [33].

17.5 Get the data

Point of contact:

ecodata name: ecodata::species_dist

Variable definitions

“along-shelf distance” “depth”
“distance to coast”
“Latitude”
“Longitude”

Indicator Category:

17.6 Public Availability

Source data are NOT publicly available.

17.7 Accessibility and Constraints

Contact Kevin Friedland, for data access

tech-doc link https://noaa-edab.github.io/tech-doc/species_dist.html

References

33.
Friedland KD, McManus MC, Morse RE, Link JS. Event scale and persistent drivers of fish and macroinvertebrate distributions on the Northeast US Shelf. ICES Journal of Marine Science. 2019;76: 1316–1334. doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsy167