Quantifying recreational intensity in complex urban waterways

Ports and harbours are a heterogeneous mosaic of natural habitat and complex infrastructure that can sit within vast urbanised catchments. They are heavily utilised for both commerce and recreation. These urban waterways are... [ view full abstract ]

Ports and harbours are a heterogeneous mosaic of natural habitat and complex infrastructure that can sit within vast urbanised catchments. They are heavily utilised for both commerce and recreation. These urban waterways are often overlooked in spatial management plans, perhaps due to the difficulty of quantifying this human 'use’, or the lack of spatially explicit species and diversity data. It is critical, however, to provide policymakers with the right tools to elucidate both ’human use' and habitat distributions at a scale relevant to management actions.

Here we describe a Species Distribution Modeling (SDM) technique to predict the fine scale distribution of on-water recreation within one of the worlds busiest ports, Sydney Harbour, Australia. We predict several hotspots of recreational intensity, in some parts of the harbour reaching almost 3-4 recreational users per metre. These models are both trained and tested using data from one of the most comprehensive stratified surveys of this type ever undertaken in the region.

Using this data we can examine the spatial overlap of recreational activities and new habitat models being constructed using advanced underwater photogrammetry as part of the Sydney Harbour Research Project.