Developing an optimal sampling design. A case study in a coastal marine ecosystem

The development of a sampling design for optimisingsampling site locations collected from a coastalmarine environment has been the purpose of the presentwork; application of statistical analysis and spatialautocorrelation methods have been carried out. Thedataset included data collected from 34 sampling sitesspaced out in the Strait of Lesbos, Greece, arrangedin a 1×1 NM grid. The coastal shallow ecosystem wassubdivided into three zones, an inner one (7stations), a middle one (16 stations) and an offshorezone (11 stations). The standard error of thechlorophyll-a concentrations in each zone hasbeen used as the criterion for the sampling designoptimisation, resulting into reallocation of thesampling sites into the three zones. The positions ofthe reallocated stations have been assessed byestimation of the spatial heterogeneity and anisotropyof chlorophyll-a concentrations usingvariograms. Study of the variance of the initialdataset of the inner zone taking into account spatialheterogeneity, revealed two different sub-areas andtherefore, the number of the inner stations has beenreassessed. The proposed methodology eliminates thenumber of sampling sites and maximises the informationof spatial data from marine ecosystems. It isdescribed as a step-by-step procedure and could bewidely applied in sampling design concerning coastalpollution problems.