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Inferring community properties of benthic macroinvertebrates in streams using Shannon index and exergy

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Abstract

Definition of ecological integrity based on community analysis has long been a critical issue in risk assessment for sustainable ecosystem management. In this work, two indices (i.e., Shannon index and exergy) were selected for the analysis of community properties of benthic macroinvertebrate community in streams in Korea. For this purpose, the means and variances of both indices were analyzed. The results found an extra scope of structural and functional properties in communities in response to environmental variabilities and anthropogenic disturbances. The combination of these two parameters (four indices) was feasible in identification of disturbance agents (e.g., industrial pollution or organic pollution) and specifying states of communities. The four-aforementioned parameters (means and variances of Shannon index and exergy) were further used as input data in a self-organizing map for the characterization of water quality. Our results suggested that Shannon index and exergy in combination could be utilized as a suitable reference system and would be an efficient tool for assessment of the health of aquatic ecosystems exposed to environmental disturbances.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, Pusan National University, Busan, 609-735, Korea

    Tuyen Van Nguyen, Hungsoo Kim & Il Hyo Jung

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Pusan National University, Busan, 609-735, Korea

    Tuyen Van Nguyen, Woon-Seok Cho & Tae-Soo Chon

  3. DSPENALO National Robotics Research Center, Pusan National University, Busan, 609-735, Korea

    Hungsoo Kim

  4. Department of Mathematics, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, 702-701, Korea

    YongKuk Kim

Authors
  1. Tuyen Van Nguyen
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  2. Woon-Seok Cho
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  3. Hungsoo Kim
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  4. Il Hyo Jung
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  5. YongKuk Kim
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  6. Tae-Soo Chon
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Correspondence to Tae-Soo Chon.

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Tuyen Van Nguyen received his Bachelor’s degree in Theoretical Physics from the Honors Program for Talented Students of Hanoi National University of Education in 2006. He then completed the Master’s Program in Mathematical Ecology at the Department of Biological Sciences of Pusan National University (PNU) in 2009. In 2011, he attended a three-month summer program at the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA). He is currently a Ph.D candidate at the Department of Mathematics, PNU. His scientific interests include the development of spatially explicit models, eco-evolutionary individual-based simulation, hidden Markov models, and the application of statistical physics to analysis of macroinvertebrate behavioral and ecological data.

Woon-Seok Cho completed his M.S. at the Department of Biological Sciences, PNU. He is currently a Ph.D candidate at the Department of Biological Sciences, PNU. He has published three scientific papers as first author and four as a co-author. His scientific interests include development of individual-based models to address the individual-population-community relationship and analysis of community data by using self-organizing map (SOM) and speciesabundance distribution in response to natural and anthropogenic variability.

Hungsoo Kim earned his Ph.D in theoretical physics from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1999. He published several papers in the field of quantum information and statistical physics. He is currently involved in analysis of complex ecological data and application of the computational method to adaptive dynamics in behavior and ecology. His scientific interests include statistical physics applied to the hidden Markov model, stochastic processes, and development of biologically inspired machine learning.

Il Hyo Jung earned his Ph.D in mathematics from the KAIST, Korea, in 1997. His major fields include applied analysis, partial differential equations, ordinary differential equations, and mathematical biology. He has published about 40 scientific papers as first and co-author. He is currently a Professor and Director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at the Department of Mathematics, PNU.

YongKuk Kim is a Professor in mathematics at Kyungpook National University. He obtained his M.S. degree from Pusan National University in 1991. Additionally, he received his Ph.D from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1998. His research interests include mathematical modeling and computation in biosciences; specifically, epidemiology and medical problems. He has been involved in collaborative research with the Korean Control Diseases and Prevention Center for development of epidemic models in Korea.

Tae-Soo Chon earned his Ph.D from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1982 and has been a Professor of Ecology and Behavior Systems, Department of Biological Sciences, PNU, since 1983. He held a 1989 research fellowship on artificial neural networks supported by the National Science Foundation, USA, at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rutgers University, USA. He has been involved in interdisciplinary studies covering ecology/behavior, mathematical biology, and electrical engineering. He has published more than 120 papers on biologically-inspired computational methods applied to ecological data, individual based models for movement and dispersal, pattern recognition, and detection of response behaviors of indicator species for water quality monitoring. He served as the first president of the Korean Society for Mathematical Biology from 2005 to 2007. He currently serves an associate editor of Ecological Informatics and is a member of the editorial advisory board for Ecological Modelling, International Journal of Limnology, and Encyclopedia of Ecology.

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Nguyen, T.V., Cho, WS., Kim, H. et al. Inferring community properties of benthic macroinvertebrates in streams using Shannon index and exergy. Front. Earth Sci. 8, 44–57 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-013-0420-9

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