Mapping the Delivery of Ecological Functions Combining Field Collected Data and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Mapping ecosystem functions and services has gained considerable importance, particularly for its applications in ecosystem management and conservation. While practices for terrestrial ecosystems are well established and mainly rely on land cover, marine ecosystems face challenges that hinder our ability to quantify and understand the distribution of ecosystem services. In particular, soft-sediment marine habitats are complex and heterogeneous but data on the distribution of communities and habitats in these systems in scarce. Mapping relies primarily on the sampling of abiotic variables and physical attributes, easier to obtain at broad scale, and therefore underestimates the role of the underlying biodiversity. In our study, we develop a mapping procedure that can handle situations where only a limited amount of data can be collected. We combined field measurements of species abundance and benthic fluxes to create models and then used data from a drone survey of the distribution of selected sediment microtopographic features linked to specific species to extrapolate these measures. This method quantifies ecosystem functions at broad spatial scales and with high resolution leading to the creation of ecologically nuanced maps that target the underlying mechanisms of ecosystem functioning, necessary to close the mismatch between physical and biological methods and accurately assess ecosystem services.