Can a ‘Habitat Risk Assessment’ be used for risk assessing small cetacean and aquaculture?

Science, Research & Data
1

Dear All
I would like to use a model to assess the cumulative risk of aquacultures (including habitat overlap, traffic derivate to aquaculture, and anoxic/hypoxic zones) to small cetaceans.
I have read the manual for habitat risk assessment and also complementary literature papers, but I don’t know if it is possible to use these models for what I want to do, and which model should I use?

  • The literature is (Hines et al., 2020; Studwell et al., 2021; and a Master of Science for Rudebusch, 2019)

  • I have spatial information on the distribution of small cetaceans in raster mode.
    Aquaculture concessions are polygons.
    Traffic derived from aquaculture is modeled in raster mode.
    Zones of hypoxia/anoxia are a point.

Thank you very much!

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Hi @Josefa , it definitely sounds like you have a good case for the Habitat Risk Assessment model. The hard part is always doing the research and literature review needed to fill out the Criteria Scores Table. But the model is flexible and allows you to only include criteria for which you have information.

It certainly sounds like you have the right spatial data to represent your habitat (cetacean distribution) and stressors (aquaculture, traffic, hypoxia zones, etc).

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