Facilitating Species Distribution Adaption: Optimizing Artificial Reef Layouts for Hypoxia Mitigation

A continuous increase in anthropogenic activities and climate changes have aggravated hypoxia occurrence frequency and habitat fragmentation, thereby enforcing species distribution shifts to acquire suitable survival spaces. Artificial reefs have emerged as effective tools for stock enhancement, habitat restoration, and as crucial components of coastal ecological corridors. However, the challenge lies in constructing optimized artificial reef areas that not only help reef-dependent species in escaping sudden hypoxic threats but also maintain essential restoration functions even under normoxic conditions. Therefore, we utilized four years of survey data on the commercially dominant black rockfish (Sebastes schlegelii) and its diets in the artificial reef area in Bohai Strait (China) to develop joint species distribution models. Additionally, we incorporated published behavioral data on black rockfish under different hypoxic threats (3 and 5 mg/L dissolved oxygen) and habitats to develop a movement model for black rockfish. Taking into account climate change scenarios (RCP 26 and 85 scenarios based on CMIP6), we predicted the hourly distribution and movement of black rockfish from 2021 to 2100 using various artificial reef deployment patterns based on cellular automata. The results showed that species distribution probabilities were significantly influenced by reef deployment rather than climate changes. Increasing the number of reef monomers enhanced the movement distance and reduced the duration of stay for black rockfish with high ecological connectivity. During summer hypoxia events, strategically locating reefs with higher connectivity adjacent to cells exhibiting higher diet abundance at the edges of hypoxic areas increased the opportunities for black rockfish to identify potential escape routes and evaded the hypoxic conditions. Our study provides new insights into the management of coastal artificial habitats and the development of ecological corridors. It also sheds light on species movement patterns in response to hypoxic conditions, paving the way for informed decision-making in habitat conservation and restoration efforts.