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The Study of Relationship between Environmental Parameters and Coral Reefs Distribution: A Case Study at Kish Island
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Seyed Hassan Mousavi   , Mohammad Reza Shokri , Hadi Poorbagher , Afshin Danehkar |
| , a_danehkar@yahoo.com |
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Abstract: (11253 Views) |
| In this study, the relationship between environmental parameters and the distribution of coral reefs in
Kish Island (Persian Gulf, Iran) were considered and the most important parameters were identified.
Environmental parameters, including depth, water temperature, salinity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, pH
and chlorophyll-a were recorded by CTD at 30 stations during summer 2010. Also, at each station, the
sediment grain size was determined by sampling, seabed slope was extracted from the bathymetric map
and current velocity was obtained from the wave modeling project in Iran. The differences between
environmental factors were analyzed by ANOVA and then identified the most important factors
influencing in the distribution of coral reefs by Principal Components Analysis (PCA) test. The result of
ANOVA showed that there is a significant variation (P<0.05) in the water depth, dissolved oxygen, and
the bottom slope between coral and non-coral regions. According to the PCA result, three independent
components (PC) were identified that had 73.157 % of the total variations. Also, the result showed highest
correlation between turbidity, depth and chlorophyll-a with PC1, salinity, bottom type and bottom slope
with PC2, and water temperature and dissolved oxygen with PC3, respectively. The results from present
study showed significant variation between aforementioned parameters with distribution of coral reefs in
Kish Island. |
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| Keywords: Environmental Parameters, Coral Reefs, PCA, Kish Island, Persian Gulf. |
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Full-Text [PDF 125 kb]
(2828 Downloads)
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Type of Study: Research/ Original/ Regular Article |
Received: 2014/06/22 | Revised: 2015/03/2 | Accepted: 2014/06/22 | ePublished: 2014/06/22
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