@article {394,
	title = {Oceonagraphic habitat of an endangered Mediterranean procellariiform: implications for marine protected areas},
	journal = {Ecological Applications},
	year = {2006},
	abstract = {<p>Marine protected areas (MPAs) require ecologically meaningful designs  capable of taking into account the particularities of the species under  consideration, the dynamic nature of the marine environment, and the  multiplicity of anthropogenic impacts. MPAs have been most often  designated to protect benthic habitats and their biota. Increasingly,  there is a need to account for highly mobile pelagic taxa, such as  marine birds, mammals and turtles, and their oceanic habitats. For  breeding seabirds foraging from a central place, particular attention  should be paid to distant foraging grounds and movement corridors, which  can often extend to hundreds of kilometers from breeding colonies. We  assessed the habitat use by the most threatened Mediterranean seabird,  the Balearic Shearwater, Puffinus mauretanicus, using vessel-based  surveys during the chick-rearing period (May-June). We used a  hierarchical modeling approach to identify those environmental variables  that most accurately reflected the oceanographic habitat of this  species by (1) delineating its foraging range using presence/ absence  data and (2) identifying important foraging grounds where it  concentrates in dense aggregations. The foraging range comprised the  frontal systems along the eastern Iberian continental shelf waters  (depth ,200 m) and areas close to the breeding colonies in the Balearic  Islands. Shearwaters aggregated in productive shelf areas with elevated  chlorophyll a concentrations. Following the model of a core-buffer MPA,  we envisioned those areas of dense aggregation (i.e., the area of  influence of the Ebro River discharge and Cape La Nao regions) as the  core regions deserving elevated protection and more stringent  management. More diffuse protective measures would be applied within the  larger buffer region, delineated by the foraging range of the species.  Marine zoning measures can greatly benefit the conservation of the  Balearic Shearwater and other far-ranging seabirds by extending  protective measures beyond their breeding colonies during both the  breeding and nonbreeding seasons.</p>},
	keywords = {Balearic Islands, benefit, buffer zone, conservation, depth, design, environment, habitat, habitat modeling, impact, island, management, marine protected area, Mediterranean sea, oceanography, protected area, protection, protection measure, Puffinus mauretanicus, sea bird, Spain, temporal heterogeneity, western Mediterranean, zoning},
	author = {M. Louzao and D. Oro and L-G. De Sola and P. Abello and J-M. Arcos and K-D. Hyrenbach}
}
