title: An approach for identifying the causes of benthic degradation in Chesapeake Bay.
abstract: We developed an index to differentiate between low dissolved oxygen effects and sediment contamination effects for sites classified as degraded by the Chesapeake Bay Benthic Index of Biotic Integrity (B-IBI), using discriminant analysis. We tested 126 metrics for differences between sites with low dissolved oxygen and sites with contaminated sediments. A total of 16 benthic community metrics met the variable selection criteria and were used to develop a discriminant function that classified degraded sites into one of two stress groups. The resulting discriminant function correctly classified 77% of the low dissolved oxygen sites and 80% of the contaminated sites in the validation data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA.
authors.forename: Cory S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Christman
authors.forename: Daniel M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Dauer
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D019015:Geologic Sediments / Q000737:chemistry*; D007448:Invertebrates; D008396:Maryland; D010100:Oxygen / Q000032:analysis; D014768:Virginia; D014873:Water Pollutants / Q000009:adverse effects*
chemical_list: D014873:Water Pollutants; D010100:Oxygen