Assessing the relative importance of stressors to the benthic index, M-AMBI: An example from U.S. estuaries.

ABSTRACT: M-AMBI, a multivariate benthic index, has been used by European and American (U.S.) authorities to assess estuarine and coastal health and has been used in scientific studies throughout the world. It has been shown to be related to multiple pressures and stressors, but the relative importance of individual stressors within a multiple stressor context has not generally been assessed. In this study, we assembled data collected between 1999 and 2015 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency using consistent methods. These data included sediment and water quality measures and benthic invertebrate data which were used to calculate M-AMBI. We further assembled watersheds for all US estuaries with benthic data and calculated land use metrics. Random forest (RF) was used to identify those variab

SUBMITTER: Pelletier MC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9813808 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature