Monica Montefalcone
Carlo Nike Bianchi- 1Seascape Ecology Laboratory (SEL), Department of Earth, Environmental and Life Sciences (DiSTAV), University of Genoa, Genova, Italy
- 2National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC), Palermo, Italy
- 3Department of Integrative Marine Ecology (EMI), Genoa Marine Centre (GMC), Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn - National Institute of Marine Biology, Ecology and Biotechnology, Genova, Italy
Editorial on the Research Topic
Seascape Ecology: from characterization to evaluation of state and change over time
Introduction
Landscape ecology was born in the 1930s when aerial photography was first adopted to study the spatial structure and heterogeneity of terrestrial ecosystems, in contrast to ‘classical’ ecology that tended to think in terms of populations and communities living in a homogeneous environment (Troll, 1939). It became a discrete, established discipline in the 1980s, with the founding of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE). For long, landscape ecology remained a substantially terrestrial discipline, due to the lack of perception of submerged landscapes and the difficulty of considering the sea as territory (Bianchi et al., 2012). It has been necessary to wait for decades to see the transfer of landscape approaches and language to marine ecosystems: apart from early attempts (e.g., Cocito et al., 1991), seascape ecology became a recognized field of research only in the 2010s, when well-known marine ecological journals published Research Topics on seascape ecology (Pittman et al., 2011; Hidalgo et al., 2016), IALE chose seascape ecology as the main theme of one of its annual meetings (Liski et al., 2015) and two books dealing with seascape ecology were published (Musard et al., 2014; Pittman, 2018). Seascape is to be intended as the totality of natural and anthropogenic characters of a marine region.
As its terrestrial counterpart, seascape ecology deals with the spatial configuration of ecosystems and consider environmental heterogeneity and dynamics as the main subjects of study and the keys for ecosystem functioning and persistence. Of course, diversity patterns on land and in the sea are different (Boudouresque et al., 2014) and seascapes cannot be equated to landscapes (Manderson, 2016). Seascapes are often perceived to be in more natural conditions with respect to landscapes (Bianchi et al., 2005). However, integrated landscape-seascape spatial analyses are rarely attempted: in the case of the overcrowded Gulf of Naples (southern Italy), the landscape exhibits higher patch edge dimension, diversity and evenness, and a lower fractal dimension than the seascape (Appolloni et al., 2018). Through marine geospatial modelling, seascape approaches represent an important decision-support tool for integrated coastal zone management (Parravicini et al., 2012).
Contributions
This Research Topic makes the point of an emerging discipline that is barely a decade old. The nine research articles here included illustrate some of the latest achievements in the field. Seascape ecology relies on special technologies such as remote sensing (either acoustic or optical), robotics, and scuba diving. Consistently, a majority of articles deal with recent advances in high-resolution marine habitat mapping. Józef et al. combined hydroacoustics and inspections to compare macroalgal meadows in two contrasting climate regimes in the Svalbards. Spyksma et al. applied diver-generated photomosaics to the temperate rocky reef ecosystems of north-eastern New Zealand. Photomosaics were an output of structure-from-motion photogrammetry, a technique that utilises numerous overlapping images, well established in terrestrial applications but still comparatively little employed in the sea. Ventura et al. integrated aerial and water surface low-cost drones for the cartography of coastal benthic habitats (beach wrack deposits, hard bottoms and seagrass meadows) in central Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy. Tomasello et al. employed photogrammetry by unmanned aerial vehicles to elaborate high-resolution digital elevation model of a giant beach wrack on the westernmost coast of Sicily, adjacent to one of the largest Posidonia oceanica meadows in the Mediterranean Sea. de Almeida et al. mapped mixed seagrass meadows in the Mexican Caribbean using satellite imagery and supervised classification based on sea truthing. The functioning of a mixed tropical seagrass meadow was studied by Cui et al., who analyzed the food web of the meadow composed of five species (Enhalus acoroides, Thalassia hemprichii, Cymodocea rotundata, Halodule uninervis, and Halophila ovalis) in South China Sea, using triple stable isotopes and fatty acid signatures.
Bioconstruction is a peculiar feature of the marine environment. Vermetid reefs are an outstanding example of bioconstruction that modify coastal seascapes forming platforms in the intertidal zone of rocky coasts; with their three-dimensional and seaward-expanding structure, they support high biodiversity levels and provide important ecological functions and ecosystem services. Picone and Chemello characterized a vermetid reef in Sicily (Italy) by means of unmanned aerial vehicle imagery.
Habitat characterization, to identify types, is the first phase of the process of environmental diagnostics, a typical application of seascape ecology; the second and final phase is evaluation, to define status and values. Ecological indices are a major tool to achieve the latter target. Astruch et al. developed an ecosystem-based index to assess the health status of coastal detritic bottoms, one of the most extensive habitats of the continental shelf worldwide, in the upper levels of the circalittoral zone. The index was tested in southern France, where rhodoliths (free living coralline algae) characterizes the seascape and might be an indicator of good environmental status for this kind of marine habitat. Thanks to the availability of a large dataset encompassing a wide array of descriptors, Oprandi et al. compared the performance of eleven indices relative to three habitats/biotic components (reefs, seagrass, and fish) in a marine protected area of Sardinia, Italy.
Perspectives
Efforts on seascape ecology like those in this Research Topic should be fostered, as the acceleration of environmental crises related to climate change, widespread sea pollution, and growing ocean overexploitation represent ever growing threats to marine ecosystems. In particular, future research should aim at increasing our understanding of seascape responses to environmental change, in order to offer information useful to develop tools to mitigate human impact on the marine environment.
Author contributions
MM: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. CB: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
Acknowledgments
We thank the contributing authors, reviewers, and the Frontiers in Marine Science editorial staff for their support in producing this Research Topic.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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References
Appolloni L., Sandulli R., Bianchi C. N., Russo G. F. (2018). Spatial analyses of an integrated landscape-seascape territorial system: the case of the overcrowded Gulf of Naples, Southern Italy. J. Environ. Accounting Manage. 6 (4), 365–380. doi: 10.5890/JEAM.2018.12.009
Bianchi C. N., Catra M., Giaccone G., Morri C. (2005). “Il paesaggio marino costiero: ambienti e diversità,” in Mediterraneo: Ambienti, Paesaggio, Diversità. Eds. Cosentino A., La Posta A., Maggiore A. M., Tartaglini N. (Milano: Téchne), 30–61.
Bianchi C. N., Parravicini V., Montefalcone M., Rovere A., Morri C. (2012). The challenge of managing marine biodiversity: a practical toolkit for a cartographic, territorial approach. Diversity 4, 419–452. doi: 10.3390/d4040419
Boudouresque C. F., Ruitton S., Bianchi C. N., Chevaldonné P., Fernandez C., Harmelin-Vivien M., et al. (2014). “Terrestrial versus marine diversity of ecosystems. And the winner is: the marine realm,” in Proceedings of the 5th Mediterranean symposium on marine vegetation, (Tunis: UNEP/MAP–RAC/SPA) 11–25.
Cocito S., Bianchi C. N., Degl'Innocenti F., Forti S., Morri C., Sgorbini S., et al. (1991). “Esempio di utilizzo di descrittori ambientali nell'analisi ecologica del paesaggio sommerso marino costiero,” Atti della Società Italiana di Ecologia 13, 65–68.
Hidalgo M., Secor D. H., Browman H. I. (2016). Introduction to the Themed Section: ‘Seascape Ecology’. Observing and managing seascapes: linking synoptic oceanography, ecological processes, and geospatial modelling. ICES J. Mar. Sci. 73 (7), 1825–1830. doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsw079
Liski A., Metzger M., Wilson M. (2015). “Seascape ecology: connecting land, sea and society,” in Proceedings of the 22nd IALE UK Conference (Edinburgh 7-9 September 2015). (United Kingdom: University of Edimburg), 9191.
Manderson J. P. (2016). Seascapes are not landscapes: an analysis performed using Bernhard Riemann's rules. ICES J. Mar. Sci. 73 (7), 1831–1838. doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsw069
Musard O., Le Dû-Blayo L., Francour P., Beurier J. P., Feunteun E., Talassinos L. (2014). Underwater Seascapes: from Geographical to Ecological Perspectives (Cham, Switzerland: Springer), 291.
Parravicini V., Rovere A., Vassallo P., Micheli F., Montefalcone M., Morri C., et al. (2012). Understanding relationships between conflicting human uses and coastal ecosystems status: a geospatial modeling approach. Ecol. Indic. 19, 253–263. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2011.07.027
Pittman S., Kneib R., Simenstad C., Nagelkerken I. (2011). Seascape ecology: application of landscape ecology to the marine environment. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 427, 187–302. doi: 10.3354/meps09139
Keywords: seafloor mapping, seagrass meadows, macroalgae, rocky reefs, rhodolith beds, vermetid reefs, biotic indices, bioconstruction
Citation: Montefalcone M and Bianchi CN (2023) Editorial: Seascape Ecology: from characterization to evaluation of state and change over time. Front. Mar. Sci. 10:1254749. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2023.1254749
Received: 07 July 2023; Accepted: 17 July 2023;
Published: 27 July 2023.
Edited and Reviewed by:
Stelios Katsanevakis, University of the Aegean, GreeceCopyright © 2023 Montefalcone and Bianchi. 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) and the copyright owner(s) 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: Monica Montefalcone, monica.montefalcone@unige.it