Abstract
Historical Data in the CoastNet Geoportal: Documenting Fish Assemblages in Portuguese Estuaries
Highlights
Coastal ecosystems such estuaries, are among the most productive ecosystems on Earth (Costanza et al, 1997), providing crucial ecological services, such as maintenance of biodiversity and fisheries, coastal protection or nutrient cycling (Barbier et al, 2011)
The longstanding increase in population continue to impact these systems in a multifaceted way, and at a global scale conservation measures are weakly related with the distribution of sensitive fish species which remain susceptible to high pressures (Vasconcelos et al, 2017)
It is evident that these core metrics varied considerably among the estuaries
Summary
Coastal ecosystems such estuaries, are among the most productive ecosystems on Earth (Costanza et al, 1997), providing crucial ecological services, such as maintenance of biodiversity and fisheries (including through their role as nurseries), coastal protection or nutrient cycling (Barbier et al, 2011). Long-term datasets are crucial temporal baselines that can be harnessed to distinguish between effects of anthropogenic origin and natural trends, providing a benchmark to monitoring ecosystem change (Connor et al, 2019) Portuguese estuaries and their adjacent areas play an important nursery role for several commercially important fish species, and their habitat use by juveniles has been thoroughly evaluated (e.g., Cabral et al, 2007; Vasconcelos et al, 2010, 2011; França et al, 2012; Tanner et al, 2012; Reis-Santos et al, 2015). The present work aims to (1) release both datasets for public use; (2) describe their content through basic diversity metrics; (3) provide guidance for access and (4) show their increased potential to be integrated in a broader context of regional/global long-term structure and composition changes in estuarine fish assemblages These data can underpin the evaluation of future scenarios of environmental changes due to natural and/or anthropogenic pressures and predict responses at species, population, community, or ecosystem levels. Such predictions are essential tools towards understanding ecosystem functioning and guiding policy management and conservation strategies
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