Multivariate approaches to the variation in phytobenthic communities and environmental vectors in the Baltic Sea

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Abstract
Quantitative data on plant and animal distribution, biomass and environmental data from vegetation-covered bottoms in the northern Baltic proper are anlayzed with numerical methods used in modern terrestrial vegetation analysis. The classification and matrix-structuring method TABORD and the ordination method detrended canonical correspondence analysis (DCCA) are described in some detail. The main aim of these multivariate analyses is to correlate environmental factors with detected patterns of species distribution. As the material had already been analyzed by conventional techniques, an evaluation of the multivariate methods was possible. They proved to be a good help in interpreting large data sets from phytobenthic communities. The analyses stress the importance of depth, bottom type and wave exposure, in order to decreasing importance, as the major factors ruling the observed zonation patterns. In contrast with true marine ecosystems, biotic interactions seem to be of minor importance for the establishment of large-scale zonation of phytobenthos in the Baltic Sea.

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