Use of Ordination Techniques to Follow Community Succession from Oil Impact to Recovery in the Field

Much effort has been directed toward elucidating pollution effects on marine benthic communities (Pearson and Rosenberg, 1978; Sanders et al., 1980; NAS 1985). Less effort has been directed at methods of data analysis which will identify distribution patterns and relationships between communities. Traditional community structure summary parameters such as species richness and various indices of diversity utilize only part of the information contained in a data set and are not very useful in elucidating relationships between communities of animals.