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Using decision trees to predict benthic communities within and near the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the North Sea

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Abstract

In this article a concept is described in order to predict and map the occurrence of benthic communities within and near the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the North Sea. The approach consists of two work steps: (1) geostatistical analysis of abiotic measurement data and (2) calculation of benthic provinces by means of Classification and Regression Trees (CART) and GIS-techniques. From bottom water measurements on salinity, temperature, silicate and nutrients as well as from punctual data on grain size ranges (0–20, 20–63, 63–2,000 μ) raster maps were calculated by use of geostatistical methods. At first the autocorrelation structure was examined and modelled with help of variogram analysis. The resulting variogram models were then used to calculate raster maps by applying ordinary kriging procedures. After intersecting these raster maps with punctual data on eight benthic communities a decision tree was derived to predict the occurrence of these communities within the study area. Since such a CART tree corresponds to a hierarchically ordered set of decision rules it was applied to the geostatistically estimated raster data to predict benthic habitats within and near the EEZ.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Landscape Ecology, University of Vechta, Vechta, Germany

    Roland Pesch, Hendrik Pehlke & Winfried Schröder

  2. Alfred-Wegener-Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany

    Kerstin Jerosch & Michael Schlüter

  3. Institute for Environmental Science, University of Vechta, Postfach 1553, 49377, Vechta, Germany

    Roland Pesch

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  1. Roland Pesch
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  2. Hendrik Pehlke
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  3. Kerstin Jerosch
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  4. Winfried Schröder
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  5. Michael Schlüter
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Correspondence to Roland Pesch.

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Pesch, R., Pehlke, H., Jerosch, K. et al. Using decision trees to predict benthic communities within and near the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the North Sea. Environ Monit Assess 136, 313–325 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-007-9687-1

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