Abstract
Habitat attributes of submerged aquatic vegetation and floating-leaved aquatic vegetation were analyzed from survey data collected in estuaries and coastal river systems of Mississippi and Mobile Bay, Alabama. The objectives were to: locate aquatic plant beds along tidally influenced areas and characterize landscape parameters of the sites; group the plant species into a manageable number of logical clusters; and characterize the landscape attributes indicative of the plant communities through Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis. Based on the cluster analyses, aquatic vegetation was categorized into three groups: (1) downstream estuarine/saline group, (2) brackish tolerant freshwater species group, and (3) upstream freshwater only group. Landscape features used for habitat characterization and plant classification were defined by long-term environmental conditions which would shape plant communities, rather than water quality parameters, such as water transparency and salinity, that exhibit higher variability and reflect the discrete conditions at time of sampling. The CART results suggest that salinity and “energy” (relative exposure to waves/currents) are the two most important abiotic factors that structure plant communities in the river deltas studied. Abstract: Atributos del habitat de vegetacion acuatica sumergida y vegetacion acuatica con hojas flotantes fueron analizados a partir de los datos de encuestas recogidas en los estuarios y sistemas fluviales costeras de Mississippi y la bahia de Mobile, Alabama. Los objetivos fueron: localizar camas de plantas acuaticas a lo largo de las zonas influidas por las mareas y caracterizar los parametros del paisaje de los sitios; Agrupar las especies de plantas en un numero manejable de agrupaciones logicos; y caracterizar los atributos paisajisticos indicativos de las comunidades de plantas a traves del analisis de arboles de clasificacion y regresion (CART). Con base en los analisis de agrupaciones, la vegetacion acuatica se clasifico en tres grupos: (1) Grupo de aguas abajo del estuario / solucion salina, (2) Grupo de especies de agua dulce tolerantes salobres, y (3) grupo de aguas arriba solamente agua dulce. Las caracteristicas del paisaje utilizadas para la caracterizacion del habitat y la clasificacion de plantas fueron definidas por las condiciones ambientales a largo plazo, que darian forma a las comunidades de plantas, en lugar de parametros de calidad del agua, tales como la transparencia del agua y la salinidad, que presentan una mayor variabilidad y reflejan las condiciones discretas en el momento del muestreo. Los resultados del CART analisis sugieren que la salinidad y “energia” (exposicion relativa a las ondas/corrientes) son los dos factores abioticos mas importantes que estructuran comunidades vegetales en los deltas de los rios estudiados.
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