Abstract

Spatiotemporal visualization of the impact of geomorphological changes in coastlines benthic habitats can generate insight needful in understanding the spatial ecology of seafloors and in anticipating the location, growth and migration of marine sanctuary and marine protected areas (MPAs). Such understanding has implication for effective development and conservation of these MPAs. To date, there are limited studies that have applied complex adaptive systems (CAS) to investigate the impact of geomorphological changes on the location, growth and migration of benthic habitats. Also, there is a gap in our knowledge of the marine geographical information system (marine GIS). To fill these gaps in the literature, we propose the use of the CAS theory as a lens to study the growth and migration of underwater (benthic) habitats in the Hawaii coastline using bathymetric SoNAR Multibeam data. We investigate the research question that concerns whether spatial approach helps in understanding the impact of projected geomorphological changes on patterns of growth and migration of benthic habitats of Hawaii coastlines. We develop a spatiotemporal IT antifact that engages a prediction machine to project individual data units (micro-data) to future states based on geomorphological changes using dynamic spatial microsimulation based method. The results of our study provide evidence of the contributions of spatial approach to understanding benthic habitat. The results also present research and practical implications for marine exploration and resource managers, and governments.

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