Benthic Invertebrate Community Monitoring and Indicator Development for Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor Estuary : Year 2, Final Report
Date
2014-06-03
Date Removed
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Volume Title
Publisher
Trenton, N.J. : New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Science, Research and Environmental Health
Abstract
The Barnegat Bay ecosystem is potentially under stress from human impacts, which appear to have increased over the past several decades. Benthic macroinvertebrates are commonly
included in studies to monitor the effects of human and natural stresses on marine and estuarine
ecosystems. There are several reasons for this. Macroinvertebrates (here defined as animals retained on a 0.5-mm-mesh sieve) are abundant in most coastal and estuarine sediments, typically on the order of 103 to 104 individuals per meter squared. Benthic communities are typically composed of many taxa from different phyla, and quantitative measures of community diversity (e.g., Rosenberg et al. 2004) and the relative abundance of animals with different feeding behaviors (e.g., Pelletier et al. 2010, Weisberg et al. 1997), can be used to evaluate ecosystem health. Because most benthic invertebrates are sedentary as adults, they function as integrators, over periods of months to years, of the properties of their environment.
Description
Keywords
New Jersey, Invertebrates - New Jersey - Barnegat Bay, Benthos - New Jersey - Barnegat Bay, Benthic ecology - New Jersey - Barnegat Bay