Title: The benthos in the management of marine sediments
Abstract: Throughout the previous chapters, we have focused on our understanding of the benthic system, its processes, structure, and functioning but, hopefully, we have also shown some of the changes to the system as the result of human activities. It is now relevant to look at the way in which management relies on and uses benthic data and information, the way in which benthic information and data are put into a wider context, and the way we manage marine sediments. Although examples in this chapter are mainly taken from European initiatives, the same examples exist in other regions. In all countries, there are many agencies and bodies involved directly or directly in the science and management of marine sediments—some carry out marine benthic studies and/or the monitoring, some require others to carry out the monitoring, and others use the benthic research and monitoring information. Throughout this book we have indicated many of the numerical techniques at our disposal for analysing benthic data, for linking them to the environmental variables, and for using them in understanding the functioning of the marine system, not least in relation to human activities. Indeed, Elliott (1996) suggested that there were approximately 26 groups of techniques for analysing the benthos and Gray (2000) describes recent methods and the progress made recently in analysing benthic data—by now we have added even more techniques. We have indicated here how some of the techniques have been adapted from other fields of ecology, such as terrestrial systems and even, in some cases, from other fields altogether; for example the main diversity index used, Shannon–Wiener H',was obtained from information and systems analysis. Figure 11.1 indicates how many of those methods link together in order to obtain a large amount of information from the benthos—it is axiomatic that no single technique gives a large amount of information and many of them rely on several techniques being used together. Figure 11.1 indicates how we start with community structural and primary variables (abundance, biomass, etc.) and move on from these into univariate and derived community variables as well as graphical techniques for community structure.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-22
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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