Developing a scuba trail vulnerability index (STVI): a case study from a Mediterranean MPA |
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Authors: | Antonio Di Franco Agnese Marchini Pasquale Baiata Marco Milazzo Renato Chemello |
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Institution: | (1) Dip. di Ecologia, Università di Palermo, Via Archirafi, 18, 90123 Palermo, Italy;(2) Laboratorio di Zoologia e Biologia Marina, DiSTeBA, Università di Lecce, Via Prov.le Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy;(3) Dip. di Ecologia del Territorio, Sez. di Ecologia, Università di Pavia, Via S. Epifanio, 14, 27100 Pavia, Italy |
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Abstract: | Scuba diving is now one of the major form of commercial use of marine protected areas (MPAs) around the world and the control
of its potential impacts on the marine environment represents a fundamental key to manage this recreational activity in highly
dived areas. A potential tool to tackle such issues has been thought to be the definition of a value of recreational carrying
capacity of an area, but this approach has been rarely considered management-effective. Therefore, the first step for effectively
managing scuba-diving should be ‘bottom-up’: characterizing the benthic communities potentially affected by diving and evaluating
their vulnerability. Aim of this paper is to propose a tool to define an index of vulnerability for dive trails (STVI: scuba
trail vulnerability index). This has taken into consideration both physical and biological features of each trail. All the
considered features are represented by non-quantitative variables, because either they are purely qualitative or their quantitative
measurement is impractical. The management of such qualitative information and its translation into a formal methodology was
performed by means of fuzzy logic, which has been repeatedly proposed as a powerful technique to develop indices of environmental
quality. The approach adopted in this study provided a useful tool for the preliminary assessment of the potential vulnerability
of benthic assemblages to scuba-diving and may represent an alternative method to the assessment of carrying capacity. The
application of this index will enable management strategies for potentially reducing the degradation of benthic organisms/assemblages,
and allowing a sustainable use of MPAs. |
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Keywords: | Marine protected areas Diving Vulnerability Fuzzy logic Index |
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