A benthic index of biological integrity for assessing habitat quality in estuaries of the southeastern USA

Organic carbon content of sediments as an indicator of stress in the marine benthos

“…Methods were not available to make such comparisons with the other data sets. The degraded benthic condition was evaluated using a multi-metric, benthic index of biotic integrity (B-IBI) based on the methods of Van Dolah et al (1999). High sediment contamination was defined using guidelines presented in Hyland et al (1999).…”

The sediment quality guideline, ERL, is not a chemical concentration at the threshold of sediment toxicity

“…Van Dolah et al (1999) deemed a sediment sample to be degraded if its chemical concentrations included three or more ERL exceedances; there is no basis for attributing any significance to multiple ERL exceedances. In fact, in this case, the use of ERLs led to a deeper complication.…”

“…In fact, in this case, the use of ERLs led to a deeper complication. Van Dolah et al (1999) were classifying sediment to establish a benthic-index of biotic integrity (B-IBI). Their derived B-IBI is based on numbers and types of benthic organisms but it first had to be defined by separating reference from degraded sites.…”

“…There are several instances (Van Dolah et al, 1999;EPA, 2001a;SFEI, 2003;and Kiddon et al, 2003) where authors have attributed undue biological significance to the sediment quality guideline called the Effects Range Low (ERL) (Long and Morgan, 1990). The point of this short note is to clarify that an ERL is not a threshold.…”

Review and evaluation of estuarine biotic indices to assess benthic condition

“…Van Dolah et al, 1999). (Carr and Gaston, 2002) The mIBI is a multimetric index that was designed to evaluate the benthic condition of an ecosystem, and was developed specifically for application to the Calcasieu estuary (USA).…”