Spying on benthic communities: Using sediment profile imaging (SPI) to evaluate soft-bottom habitats
Citation:
Nestlerode, J. AND E. Hinchey-Malloy. Spying on benthic communities: Using sediment profile imaging (SPI) to evaluate soft-bottom habitats. International Association for Great Lakes Research (IAGLR) Annual Conference, Brockport, New York, June 10 - 14, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
This is an invited presentation to the IAGLR 2019 conference session "Mud, macrofauna, and microbes: Benthic organism-abiotic interactions at varying scales", organized to identify and fill knowledge gaps concerning ecology of benthic sediments in Great Lakes and estuarine systems.
Description:
Sediment profile imaging (SPI) offers an in situ view of the sediment–water interface and subsurface features in sediments, yielding both quantitative and qualitative data on the biological, chemical, and physical character of the sediments. Since the development of the SPI approach in the early 1970s, the majority of sediment profile work has been performed in marine or estuarine habitats. In marine environments, the information in these images is used to estimate benthic community successional stages, ecosystem function, and habitat quality. We present an overview of this tool, the image-based multimetric indices used to assess benthic condition, and discuss the utility in developing SPI-based indices of benthic habitat quality specific to freshwater systems. Results of SPI surveys conducted 2018 in Lake Ontario as part of the Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative (CSMI) and plans for similar applications in Lake Erie CSMI in 2019 will also be discussed. This remote sensing approach, being rapid and comparatively inexpensive in both deployment and data analysis, may be used by scientists and managers to efficiently evaluate greater areas of systems at finer spatial scales.