Sampling effort required to recover the main gradients in marine benthic species composition

Marine benthic surveys and monitoring programs may have several goals. When the aim of such studies is to reveal and describe gradients in species composition, the gain in ecological insight achieved by the study depends on how well the spatial variability of species’ occurrence and abundance within the study area is covered by the sampling design. The common practice in such programs is to collect four or five grab samples from each visited site to capture the site's species composition. The rationale for this practice is based on the aim of capturing a large proportion of species at a specific site (i.e. point). We argue that this practice has been established without taking Iterative approaches into account, such as decreasing the sampling effort at each site and instead increase the number of sites visited. The collection and processing of data from marine sediment ecosystems are time‐consuming and, thus, expensive. Therefore, finding the optimal trade‐off between the number of sites visited and the number of samples per site is important. We examined this trade‐off by exploring how reduction of sampling effort per site affects the stability and recovery of gradients in species composition of marine benthic macrofauna. Our full data set consisted of four grab samples from each of 28 sites from the inner part of the Oslofjord, SE Norway. Procrustes analysis and calculation of Kendall's rank correlation coefficients showed that the main gradient in species composition extracted by detrended correspondence analysis of data sets with reduced per‐site sampling effort closely resembled the main gradient extracted for the full data set. Our results therefore suggest that marine benthic surveys that aim to identify the main gradient structure of species composition and relate this structure to main environmental complex gradients are likely to benefit from reducing the sampling effort at each site and, instead, increasing the number of visited sites. We argue that coverage of both the variation in species composition and the environment in the study area will then be improved. Monitoring programs with other aims than to identify the main gradients in species composition may also benefit from the adoption of a many‐sites, one‐sample sampling strategy. This may be particularly true if additional sampled sites are based on a stratified sampling strategy that ensures that the spatial variability in the study area is accounted for.     

Morphometric variation in the cutlassfish Trichiurus lepturus on the Kenyan coast: implications for stock identification and management

Morphometric variation was used to study population structure of the cutlassfish Trichiurus lepturus on the Kenyan coast. In all, 16 morphometric measurements taken from 193 individuals from six sites were subjected to multivariate statistical analysis in order to determine possible stock differentiation. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated significant differences in the means of a combination of the morphometric characters among the sites, and discriminant function analysis by groups showed the presence of phenotypically distinct populations on the south and north coasts of Kenya. A classification tree analysis of morphometric characters validated the distinct groups and indicated certain characters to be useful for classifying specimens to source sites. The likely presence of distinct north and south stocks of T. lepturus on the Kenyan coast observed in our study will require validation by other methods, but indicates the potential need for spatially explicit models for managing fish populations on a large spatial scale.     

Geochemical and statistical characterization of the phosphate facies of the Farim‐Saliquinhé phosphate mineralization (Guinea‐Bissau)

The Eocene Farim‐Saliquinhé phosphate mineralization (FSPM) is a buried sedimentary deposit located in the northern part of Guinea‐Bissau, discovered and spatially constrained during the 1980s by the French Geological Survey (BRGM). In the present work some of the data collected at that time are reworked in the framework of the development of a 3D geological and geochemical model of this mineralization. We show the usefulness of two classical multivariate statistical methods – principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) – applied to eight geochemical variables (P₂O₅, SiO₂, Al₂O₃, Fe₂O₃, CaO, MgO, F and CO₂) measured in 247 samples from phosphate facies, for differentiation of samples taken from the different phosphate facies recognized in the FSPM, namely the main ore FPA (30 to 35% high grade phosphate), the calcareous low grade phosphate FPB (10 to 20% P₂O₅) (both Lutetian), and a mineralized Upper Eocene to Lower Oligocene cover (mainly including the FPO level and a silico‐aluminous phosphate bed), overlying the FPA, which can also be considered a third set of phosphate facies associated with the FSPM.     

多元总体最小二乘在大旋转角三维坐标转换中的应用

传统的Bursa七参数模型坐标转换方法在大旋转角应用中存在不足,且未考虑到随机误差。基于EIV模型的多元总体最小二乘方法,不仅考虑了系数矩阵和观测值的随机误差,而且直接通过奇异值分解求解坐标旋转矩阵,大大简化了计算步骤,无须迭代计算。推导了多元总体最小二乘的坐标转换公式,设计了转换算法,并利用模拟数据对大角度三维坐标转换进行了验证。结果表明:多元总体最小二乘方法比基于Gauss-Markov(GM)模型的最小二乘方法的精度更高,且无须迭代计算,计算过程更加高效。     

安徽省地质灾害气象风险预警系统方法研究

地质灾害气象风险预警是地质灾害防范的关键环节,对增强灾害防御能力,变被动救灾为主动防灾避灾具有重要意义.本研究采用确定性系数法和基于CF的权重确定方法,计算了各评价单元的潜势度.通过建立多元回归预测模型,将基于潜势度、预报雨量、有效雨量的气象风险预警系统方法应用于安徽省地质灾害气象风险预警工作中,并建立了一套完整的从数...     

北京市生活垃圾产生量预测方法的比较分析

依据北京市1991~2006年的生活垃圾产生量及其相关影响因子,运用多元线性回归法、灰色模型、BP神经网络3种预测模型进行了模拟,并预测了北京市2007年和2010年的垃圾产生量,通过绝对百分误差(MAPE)等指标比较了预测精确度。结果表明,BP神经网络综合考虑了各种因素的影响,较前两者的拟合和预测精度高。     

基于Copula函数的联合概率法在海洋工程中的应用

本文介绍了Copula函数的定义、属性和几种特殊的Copula函数.将Copula函数应用到近海工程中,用其建立了最大有效波高和最大风速的联合分布函数并检验,结果表明:Copula函数能够比较好的模拟实际的联合概率分布。通过Copula方法,可以由边缘分布和一个连接它们的Copula函数来得出联合分布函数,发挥其描述相关性尤其是尾部相关性的优势。该方法在近海工程的工程可靠度、设计标准和失效概率的计算中具有广泛的应用前景。     

我国南海4个青蛤野生群体的形态差异分析

用8个形态性状比较我国南海4个野生青蛤群体间的形态变异。聚类分析表明,湛江群体和汕头群体的形态较接近,海口群体的趋异最大。主成分分析表明,主成分1、2、3的贡献率分别为26.441%、21.104%、15.884%,累计贡献率为63.428%。逐步判别分析结果显示,4个群体形态差异显著(P<0.01)。建立了4群体判别函数,其判别准确率P1为51.4%～71.4%,判别分析准确率P2为60%～75.8%,4群体的综合判别率为64.3%。Mantel-test检验结果表明,我国南海青蛤不同地理群体的欧式距离与地理距离没有明显的相关性(r=0.4227,P=0.3910)。