Shoot Biomass Assessments of the Marine Phanerogam Zostera marina for Two Methods of Data Gathering

Elena Solana-Arellano, Héctor Echavarría-Heras, Victoria Díaz-Castañeda, Olga Flores-Uzeta

Marine Ecology Department, Ensenada Scientific and Higher Education Center, Baja California, México.

DOI: 10.4236/ajps.2012.311186                

Abstract

In order to compare to data gathering methods for shoot biomass assessments of Zostera marina, we compare two allometric models each one representing a data gathering method, one at leaf level and the other in aggregated form. The first allometric model presented leaf dry weight in terms of leaf length as . The second model is expressed as a several-variables version of the allometric Equation (1) dry weight of each leaf in a given shoot can be considered to be a random variable therefore shoot biomass w_s can be represented in the form Both models presented similar determination coefficients values of 0.85 and 0.87 respectively. We found no significant differences between parameters α (p = 0.11) and β (p = 0.50) fitted for each model, showing that both equations conduced to the same result. Moreover, both fitted models presented high Concordance Correlation Coefficients of reproducibility () (0.92 and 0.91). We concluded that for shoot weight assessments if larger samples and faster data processing is required then should model of Equation (2) be used. On the other hand, we proposed model of Equation (1) if data at leaf level is required for other endeavors.

Keywords

Allometric Models; Aggregated Data; Leaf Dry Weight; Shoot Dry Weight

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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