Predictive modeling of marine benthic macrofauna and its use to inform spatial monitoring design

This study undertakes ecological analysis focused on predictive modelling and design for spatial sampling. The approaches are applied to a set of coastal marine benthic macrofaunal observations, and associated environmental data, measured at 48 sites in St Anns Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada. A multivariate generalized least-squares regression was used to establish a predictive relationship between benthic fauna and the environment. Five ecological indices derived from faunal composition (abundance, richness, species number, diversity, AMBI) were treated as a multivariate response, and 10 environmental variables as candidate predictors. The multivariate regression also incorporated the effects of spatial autocorrelation. Predictive relationships were highly significant, and variable selection identified three key environmental predictors (median sediment grain size, porosity, and sulfide). Using these baseline data, we developed a procedure to identify a reduced sampling design for long-term monitoring of benthic faunal health. The procedure is based on a sequential (backward elimination) algorithm to identify the set of sites that contributed most to the overall information. This study provides a general and comprehensive statistical framework for treating environmental monitoring and sampling design. It can be extended beyond the statistical framework used, and applied to a range of ecological applications.