Download AEBR 121 Environmental preferences of seabirds and spatial distribution of seabirds and marine mammals in the Ross Sea area

Boosted regression trees were used to model the relationships between available remote-sensed environmental data and sightings data of four petrels in the Ross Sea area: Antarctic, snow petrel, cape, and southern giant petrel. The distribution of each species was influenced by different variables, with distance from shelf break most important for Antarctic petrels; average surface temperature for snow petrels; ice cover for cape petrels; and chlorophyll summer maxima for southern giant petrels.