Development of a systematic classification scheme of marine habitats to facilitate regional management and mapping of Caribbean coral reefs

Most coastal habitat mapping is conducted on an ad hoc basis with little consistency in terminology and ambiguous documentation. These limitations obstruct interpretation and integration of maps for coral reef science and management, particularly at regional (international) scales where standardisation is urgently required. This paper advocates an objective, systematic approach to habitat classification which couples coastal geomorphology and benthic cover. Benthic classes are derived and described objectively using agglomerative hierarchical classification of field data and Similarity Percentage analysis of resulting clusters. The scheme has a hierarchical structure to accommodate various user requirements, variable availability of data, and the spatial scales of most remote sensing methods. We illustrate our approach with a scheme based on extensive field data from the Turks and Caicos Islands and Belize. While the scheme will not represent all habitats of the Caribbean, it provides a useful basis for a regional classification and illustrates the systematic approach. Standardised regional maps of coastal habitats will help development of predictive models of coral metapopulation dynamics, aid the identification of larval source and sink areas, and facilitate strategic transboundary planning of protected areas to maximise species, habitat, and ecosystem conservation. Habitats might also be interpreted to reflect ecosystem processes such as productivity and trophic guild structure, thereby allowing the ecosystem function to be examined at larger scales. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.