Status and trends of selected living resources in the Galveston Bay System
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Abstract
This report is part of the effort to characterize the ecosystem of the Galveston Estuary. Its purpose is to assess the relative health of the Galveston Estuary by evaluating the status and trends of several selected endemic species in order to identify potential problems, as indicated by significant declines in abundance, and to initiate the investigation of the probable causes of these declines. The species studied include: 1) commercially and ecologically important finfish and shellfish, 2) locally breeding birds, 3) alligators, 4) plankton, and 5) open bay and marsh benthos. There were two phases to the project: the identification and examination of existing data sets containing information about target species, and the statistical analysis of those data sets with sufficient information to demonstrate temporal change.