Power analysis as a tool to identify statistically informative indicators for monitoring coral reef disturbances
| Autor: | Simon Van Wynsberge, Laura Tremblay-Boyer, Nicolas Guillemot, Tom Heintz, Antoine Gilbert |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
Coral Pomacentridae 010501 environmental sciences Management Monitoring Policy and Law 01 natural sciences Mining Animals Tridacninae Ecosystem Taxonomic rank Reef 0105 earth and related environmental sciences General Environmental Science geography geography.geographical_feature_category biology Coral Reefs Ecology 010604 marine biology & hydrobiology Fishes General Medicine Coral reef Anthozoa biology.organism_classification Invertebrates Pollution Perciformes Fishery Ecological indicator Environmental Monitoring |
| Zdroj: | Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. 189 |
| ISSN: | 1573-2959 0167-6369 |
| Popis: | Extensive biological field surveys are costly and time consuming. To optimize sampling and ensure regular monitoring on the long term, identifying informative indicators of anthropogenic disturbances is a priority. In this study, we used 1800 candidate indicators by combining metrics measured from coral, fish, and macro-invertebrate assemblages surveyed from 2006 to 2012 in the vicinity of an ongoing mining project in the Voh-Kone-Pouembout lagoon, New Caledonia. We performed a power analysis to identify a subset of indicators which would best discriminate temporal changes due to a simulated chronic anthropogenic impact. Only 4% of tested indicators were likely to detect a 10% annual decrease of values with sufficient power (>0.80). Corals generally exerted higher statistical power than macro-invertebrates and fishes because of lower natural variability and higher occurrence. For the same reasons, higher taxonomic ranks provided higher power than lower taxonomic ranks. Nevertheless, a number of families of common sedentary or sessile macro-invertebrates and fishes also performed well in detecting changes: Echinometridae, Isognomidae, Muricidae, Tridacninae, Arcidae, and Turbinidae for macro-invertebrates and Pomacentridae, Labridae, and Chaetodontidae for fishes. Interestingly, these families did not provide high power in all geomorphological strata, suggesting that the ability of indicators in detecting anthropogenic impacts was closely linked to reef geomorphology. This study provides a first operational step toward identifying statistically relevant indicators of anthropogenic disturbances in New Caledonia's coral reefs, which can be useful in similar tropical reef ecosystems where little information is available regarding the responses of ecological indicators to anthropogenic disturbances. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|
Full text from SpringerLink