Effective management of deep-sea ecosystems and the high seas is hindered by the absence of a globally consistent framework for characterizing benthic habitats. Here we present the first global ecological classification of the seafloor, comprising 250 unique ecological benthic units (EBUs), distributed on the seafloor as nearly 700,000 EBU polygon occurrences, generated by intersecting a high-resolution geomorphic map with mul...

Grassland and other herbaceous communities cover significant portions of Earth's terrestrial surface and provide many critical services, such as carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, and food production. Forecasts of global change impacts on these services will require predictive tools, such as process‐based dynamic vegetation models. Yet, model representation of herbaceous communities and ecosystems lags substantially behin...

Soft fruits are at particular risk of contamination with enteric viruses such as Hepatitis A virus (HAV), Hepatitis E Virus (HEV), Norovirus (NoV), Human Adenovirus (HAdV) and Sapovirus (SaV). The aim of this study was to investigate, for the first time, the presence of these biological agents in ready to eat (RTE) berries at point of retail in Ireland. A sampling strategy was designed in which RTE fresh and frozen strawberrie...

This paper presents a species distribution model (SDM) to quantify relationships between environmental variables and habitat suitability using unbalanced presence-absence data common in ecology. The proposed model applies a stratified sample balancing scheme for the random forest classifier where every classification tree receives a balanced sample of presence and absence. The model is applied to the Australian coast's seagras...

Norovirus contamination of oysters is the lead cause of non-bacterial gastroenteritis and a significant food safety concern for the oyster industry. Here, norovirus reduction from Pacific oysters ( Crassostrea gigas), contaminated in the marine environment, was studied in laboratory depuration trials and in two commercial settings. Norovirus concentrations were measured in oyster digestive tissue before, during and post-depura...

A new data layer provides Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) labels for global coastal segments at 1 km or shorter resolution. These characteristics are summarized for six US Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) sites and one MBON Pole to Pole of the Americas site in Argentina. The global coastlines CMECS classifications were produced from a partitioning of a 30 m Landsat-derived shoreline...

Aim Current interest in forecasting changes to species ranges has resulted in a multitude of approaches to species distribution models ( SDMs ). However, most approaches include only a small subset of the available information, and many ignore smaller‐scale processes such as growth, fecundity and dispersal. Furthermore, different approaches often produce divergent predictions with no simple method to reconcile them. Here, we p...

Like many other loliginid squid, Doryteuthis (Loligo) opalescens deposits egg cases on the ocean floor. Depending upon temperature, egg cases may persist for 5–12 weeks before the paralarvae hatch. Because of this relatively long duration and squid’s pelagic life history, egg cases provide a practical life stage to survey. During 2001–2002, squid egg beds in Monterey Bay, Carmel Bay, and around the California Channel Islands w...

45The industrialization of the United States throughout the 19th century resulted in the exploitation of millions of acres of timberland across the country. Logging during that era was described by critics as “cut out and get out” because the land was usually abandoned after the merchantable timber was exhausted. Concern about future timber supplies and the effect of logging on watersheds spurred the development of professiona...