Habitat suitability modeling to predict the spatial distribution of cold-water coral communities affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Aim: The Deepwater Horizon disaster resulted in the largest accidental marine oil spill in history and caused extensive injury to deep-sea habitats, including cold-water coral communities dominated by Paramuricea species. One of the primary difficulties in assessing the full extent of the injury to cold-water coral ecosystems is the extreme paucity of observational data and the subsequent lack of knowledge of their distribution within the affected region. The aim of this study was to use habitat suitability modeling to estimate the number of potentially affected Paramuricea sp. corals across the northern Gulf of Mexico. Location: Northern Gulf of Mexico Taxon: Cold-water corals in the genus Paramuricea Methods: High-resolution (12.5 m) models were built using the maximum entropy (Maxent) approach using remotely sensed data including seafloor topography, seismic reflectivity, temperature, and the amount of productivity exported from the surface. Model outputs were used to estimate the nu...