Spatial Distribution of Habitat Suitability for Common Cockles in the Ria de Aveiro Lagoon Under Average and Projected Environmental Conditions

This dataset provides a monthly assessment of habitat suitability for the common cockle (Cerastoderma edule) within the Ria de Aveiro lagoon, Portugal. Developed as part of the COACH project funded by the Fundação Oceano Azul and the Oceanário de Lisboa, this data combines biological survey records with high-resolution hydrodynamic modeling to estimate potential distribution over a 100x100m grid. The dataset is comprised of 36 GeoTiff rasters representing the Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) under three distinct hydrological scenarios: average conditions, high freshwater discharge, and low freshwater discharge. These layers were generated using an ensemble Ecological Niche Modeling (ENM) approach—combining Boosted Regression Trees, Random Forest, and Flexible Discriminate Analysis—to capture the influence of salinity, temperature, chlorophyll-a, and current velocity on cockle potential distribution.