Coding early naturalists' accounts into long-term fish community changes in the Adriatic Sea (1800-2000).

ABSTRACT: The understanding of fish communities' changes over the past centuries has important implications for conservation policy and marine resource management. However, reconstructing these changes is difficult because information on marine communities before the second half of the 20(th) century is, in most cases, anecdotal and merely qualitative. Therefore, historical qualitative records and modern quantitative data are not directly comparable, and their integration for long-term analyses is not straightforward. We developed a methodology that allows the coding of qualitative information provided by early naturalists into semi-quantitative information through an intercalibration with landing proportions. This approach allowed us to reconstruct and quantitatively analyze a 200-year-long time se

SUBMITTER: Fortibuoni T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2984504 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature