Monitoring a freshwater fish population: statistical surveillance of biodiversity

Abstract

Statistical surveillance comprises methods for repeated analysis of stochastic processes, aiming to detect a change in the underlying distribution. Such methods are widely used for industrial, medical, economic and other applications. By applying these general methods to data collected for environmetrical purposes, it might be possible to detect important changes fast and reliably. We exemplify the use of statistical surveillance on a data set of fish catches in Lake Mälaren, Sweden, 1964–93. A model for the ‘in control’ process of one species, vendace (Coregonus albula), is constructed and used for univariate monitoring. Further, we demonstrate the application of Hotelling's T2 and the Shannon–Wiener index for monitoring biodiversity, where a set of five economically interesting species serve as bioindicators for the lake. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.