Abstract

As management of coastal areas has become more complicated, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) coupled with remote sensing have increasingly been used to help managers obtain accurate information to make decisions. Bahía Magdalena, located on the Pacific side of the Baja California Peninsula, is one of the most important bays of Mexico due to the high value of commercial fisheries that operate in the region. However, fisheries of scallops, pen shell, geoduck, and shrimp, which cause a high degree of disturbance of the benthic landscape, are already showing signs of decline. In this study, we aim to assist the management of the region by proposing priority conservation areas, based on beta-diversity modelling and landscape metrics. Quantitative estimates on the percentage of cover of benthic substrates from 60 ground truthed sites were used to perform a cluster analysis with the Bray-Curtis similarity index. Seven groupings were recog-nized, with habitats characterized by an inter-mix of sand, seagrass, macroalgae, and rock substrates. A thematic map of benthic habitats was produced utilizing a supervised classification with the maximum likelihood rule on a natural colour mosaic of high resolution satellite scenes (Kappa = 0.85). Scripts written in Matlab were then used to calculate Beta-diversity values based on the nature and distribution of habitats. A weighted overlay analysis considering habitat type, patch area/perimeter ratio and beta-diversity was performed to identify priority conservation areas. By selecting sites using these landscape characteristics we are indirectly protecting the natural processes responsible for maintaining diversity.

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