This project (WAMSI Node 4.2.1b) aimed to develop an index for assessing the health of the Swan Estuary, based on fish assemblage characteristics.
The index incorporates a suite of metrics, each of which measures a different aspect of the fish community, e.g. species diversity and composition, use of the Estuary as a nursery habitat, and the trophic structure (the feeding relationships between species) of the estuarine fish community.The study incorporated and utilized historical data from 1977-2004, plus current sampling (2007-2009), to establish reference conditions for multiple fish community metrics, against which the recent, current and future status of the estuary is assessed.
Data is available as two Excel spreadsheets:
Establishing_reference_and_scoring_seine_Metrics.xls
Establishing_reference_and_scoring_gill_Metrics.xls
The gill net and seine net files contain, respectively, for each offshore and nearshore historical fish sample collected between 1976 and 2009:
(i) the raw values calculated for each of the selected fish metrics comprising the offshore and nearshore health indices;
(ii) the corresponding metric scores (i.e. scored in comparison to the appropriate reference conditions I derived for each metric); and
(iii) the final health index scores for each historical sample.
The historical studies used in the project are all detailed in the final report.