Premium
Relating sets of variables in environmental studies: The sediment quality triad as a paradigm
Author(s) -
Green R. H.,
Boyd J. M.,
Macdonald J. S.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
environmetrics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.68
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-095X
pISSN - 1180-4009
DOI - 10.1002/env.3170040406
Subject(s) - ordination , multivariate statistics , canonical correlation , correspondence analysis , contingency table , multivariate analysis , statistics , set (abstract data type) , mantel test , principal component analysis , pairwise comparison , multidimensional scaling , computer science , econometrics , mathematics , genetic diversity , programming language , population , demography , sociology
Many environmental studies generate multivariate data, often consisting of two or more conceptually different sets of variables. For example one may wish to relate species abundances to environmental variables. A recent concept gaining popularity in marine benthic impact studies is the “sediment quality triad”, which relates benthic community composition as one set of variables to sediment chemistry (contaminents) as a second set, and to toxicities of sediment to test organisms in the laboratory as a third set. This is conceptually appealing, but the original applications of the concept rely heavily on indices (e.g. diversity indices, toxicity indices) rather than on multivariate statistics. Procedures for testing and describing relationships among variables are reviewed, with emphasis on environmental applications. We describe and exemplify several multivariate statistical approaches to effective application of the sediment quality triad concept, including Mantel's tests and related descriptive analyses; ordination on each set of variables followed by methods to relate ordination axes among the sets; canonical correlation analysis; fitting a general linear model; and cluster analysis on each set of variables followed by a three‐way contingency table analysis.