Spatial patterns in benthic biodiversity of chesapeake bay, USA (1984-1999): association with water quality and sediment toxicity

摘要

Non-point-source pollution is an increasing source of stress to aquatic, estuarine, and marine ecosystems. Such pollution may be of unknown etiology, distributed over extensive spatial scales, and comprised of multiple stressors. Current stressor-based paradigms for ecological risk assessment(ERA) may be insufficient to characterize risk from multiple stressors at regional spatial scales, necessitating the use of effects-based approaches. Historical data(1984-1999) for benthic macroinvertebrate biodiversity in Chesapeake Bay, USA, were incorporated into a geographic information system(GIS) and spatial analysis tools were used to model zones within the bay predicted to be of low or high anthropogenic impact.