Marine Habitat Suitability Predictions (monthly and decadal)
This service is the unique component of the Marine Habitat Suitability Predictions (monthly and decadal) workflow available at https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/d332a9d2-b982-4e01-8096-e08bae1880a1. The service applies habitat suitability models by using:<div>- species occurrence data from EurOBIS;</div><div>- environmental predictors from CMEMS, EMODnet, and Bio-ORACLE (sea surface temperature; salinity, net primary production, bathymetry).</div><div><br></div><div>It allows to generate monthly and decadal habitat suitability predictions in form of maps for harbour porpoise, harbour seal, common bottlenose dolphin, and common dolphin in European waters (OSPAR regions II, III and IV), showing the relative probability of occurrence for each species based on environmental conditions.
<br></div><div>To capture both short-term dynamics and long-term trends, two modelling approaches are implemented: 1) Monthly-scale model
- Purpose: To capture seasonal patterns in habitat suitability.
- Method: Matching of species data with environmental conditions from the same month.
- Output: Maps of predicted habitat suitability per month (available as NetCDF files). 2) Decadal-scale model
- Purpose: To understand long-term trends and predict future habitat suitability under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) climate change scenarios.
- Method: Matching of species occurrence data to decadal averages of environmental predictors. Predictions based on Bio-ORACLE climate projections.
- Output: Maps of predicted habitat suitability per decade (from 2020 until 2100), available as NetCDF files.
<br></div><div>The monthly-scale model can be used to identify areas that are likely to be important for these species at different times of the year, while the decadal-scale model provides insight about how these areas might shift under various future climate scenarios.
In both, the outputs represent a relative probability of species occurrence – based on environmental and previously detected occurrence data.
It is important to note that this does not reflect the actual presence or absence of the species and also depends on the quality and abundance of the data going into the model. A species may still occur in areas where the model predicts low probability and may be absent from areas with high predicted suitability. The model serves as a tool to guide decision-making, not as a definitive map of species distributions.
In order to run the workflow component, the following mandatory parameters have to be specified:
- aphia_id, which corresponds to the species identifier in the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) Aphia Database. The following four IDs are currently supported: 137117 (Phocoena phocoena – harbour porpoise); 137084 (Phoca vitulina – harbour/common seal); 137094 (Delphinus delphis – common dolphin); 137111 (Tursiops truncatus – common bottlenose dolphin).
- start_date and end_date in ISO-8601 format, which define the temporal range of occurrence records retrieved from WoRMS and subsequently used to train the habitat suitability models. Since at the moment modelling algorithm is highly sensitive to the selected date range due to data scarcity during certain periods and the way the training and cross-validation groups are generated, these parameters are set to fixed values, that are start_date = 2000-01-01 and end_date = 2019-12-31.
- copernicus_marine_username and copernicus_marine_password, which correspond to the user's credentials for the Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS, https://marine.copernicus.eu/).</div>
Default
- Date ( Publication)
- 2025-10-14
- Status
- Completed
- Version
-
1.0.0
- Keywords
-
marco-bolo
- Keywords
-
habitat suitability model
- Keywords
-
habitat suitability prediction
- Keywords
-
climate change
- Keywords
-
species occurrence
- Keywords
-
environmental variables
- Keywords
-
Copernicus
- Keywords
-
EurOBIS
- Keywords
-
EMODnet
- Keywords
-
Bio-ORACLE
- Keywords
-
harbour porpoise
- Keywords
-
harbour sea
- Keywords
-
common bottlenose dolphin
- Keywords
-
common dolphin
- Keywords
-
modelling
- Keywords
-
habitat mapping
- Access constraints
- License
- Use limitation
- OnLine resource
-
Link to the service
(
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link
)
- Operation name
-
Template output for Marine Habitat Suitability Prediction
- Description
-
The hsm_results.zip archive includes the following subfolders: 1) geospatial_layers, including the NetCDF habitat suitability maps; 2) models, including month and decade subfolders for final monthly/decadal ensemble models and performance metrics; 3) figures_tables, including exploratory analysis figures and performance tables; 4) report.html, the summary report.
- Function
-
Output file
- Related Services
-
Workflow Studio
- Topic Category
- Species distribution
- Service Category
-
data processing
- Service Category
-
data analysis
- Service Language
- eng
- Service TRL
- TRL 7 – System prototype demonstration in operational environment
- Service Helpdesk
metadataMetadata
- File identifier
- bcab6ab3-63ee-4026-8372-9d14829a6f36 XML
- Metadata language
- en
- Hierarchy level
- Service
- Metadata Schema Version
-
1.0
