Seagrass meadows in the Greek Seas: presence, abundance and spatial distribution.

Keywords: Eastern Mediterranean Sea; Posidonia oceanica; satellite; seagrass; sidescan sonar; wide-scale mapping EN Eastern Mediterranean Sea Posidonia oceanica satellite seagrass sidescan sonar wide-scale mapping 289 299 11 08/09/22 20220801 NES 220801 1 Introduction Seagrasses constitute a group of submerged flowering plants that can be found in shallow marine and brackish waters in many parts of the world, from the tropics to the Arctic Circle ([17]; [43]). In this plot, a more homogeneous coverage pattern emerges, with a mean of 0.25 ± 0.13 km SP 2 sp of seagrass meadow per km of coastline in all mapped meadows of the N. Aegean Sea. An effort to map Greek meadows using only satellite data by [41] led to an estimate of 2613.88 km SP 2 sp of seagrass meadows. 3 Results and discussion 3.1 Spatial distribution and surface area of seagrass meadows The presence of seagrass meadows was recorded along approximately 70% of the Greek coastline, with their total areal extent estimated at 2749.07 km SP 2 sp . [Extracted from the article]