A Benthic Index of Environmental Condition of Gulf of Mexico Estuaries

An index was developed for estuarine macrobenthos in the Gulf of Mexico that discriminated between areas with degraded environmental conditions and areas with undergraded or reference conditions. Test sites were identified as degraded or reference based on criteria for dissolved oxygen levels, sedim...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Estuaries 1994-06, Vol.17 (2), p.372-384
Main Authors: Engle, Virginia D., Summers, J. Kevin, Gaston, Gary R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Applied ecology
Biological and medical sciences
Brackish
Community structure
Discriminant analysis
Diversity indices
Ecotoxicology, biological effects of pollution
Estuaries
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Marine
Marine and brackish environment
Ocean pollution
Organic pollution
Oxygen
Salinity
Sediments
Species diversity
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:An index was developed for estuarine macrobenthos in the Gulf of Mexico that discriminated between areas with degraded environmental conditions and areas with undergraded or reference conditions. Test sites were identified as degraded or reference based on criteria for dissolved oxygen levels, sediment toxicity tests, and sediment contamination. Discriminant analysis was used to identify a suite of measures of benthic community composition and diversity that would most successfully distinguish degraded from undegraded sites. The resultant benthic index was composed of a linear combination of three factors: the Shannon-Wiener diversity index, the proportion of total benthic abundance as tubificid oligochaetes, and the proportion of total benthic abundance as bivalve molluscs. This index was used to evaluate the spatial patterns of degraded benthic resources in the Gulf of Mexico.
ISSN:0160-8347
1559-2758
DOI:10.2307/1352670