Integrating Environmental Drivers and Trophic Interactions to Predict Spatial Distribution of High-Risk Marine Organisms at Nuclear Power Plant Cooling Water Intake.

Abstract

Marine organisms that episodically aggregate near coastal nuclear power plant water intakes pose a substantial risk to cooling water security. Predicting the spatial distribution of such high-risk species remains challenging because their occurrence is shaped not only by environmental conditions but also by complex trophic interactions. In this study, we model the habitat distribution of three high-risk nektonic species, Dotted gizzard shad (Konosirus punctatus), Japanese swimming crab (Charybdis japonica) and squid (Loligo sp.), in the cooling water intake area of a coastal nuclear power plant in eastern Liaodong Bay using generalized linear models (GLMs) and joint species distribution models (JSDMs). Based on summer surveys conducted in 2024-2025, we explicitly incorporated trophic linkages among target species, their prey, and predators within JSDMs. Model performance was evaluated using cross-validation based on AUC, RMSE, and coefficient of determination (R²). Our results indicate that water depth was the dominant environmental driver for all three species, while chlorophyll-a concentration and distance to the intake exerted species-specific effects. By incorporating interspecific trophic associations and environmental responses, JSDMs showed consistently improved predictive performance relative to GLMs, with approximately 1.5-fold higher R² values and 10-30% lower RMSE, while offering enhanced ecological interpretability. The models revealed strong positive associations between target species and both lower-trophic prey and higher-trophic predators, suggesting that top-down and bottom-up processes jointly regulate aggregation dynamics. This study demonstrates that integrating trophic interactions into species distribution modeling substantially improves predictions of high-risk marine species near coastal infrastructure and provides an ecological basis for proactive management of cooling water intake systems.