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

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.