Aquatic Ecosystem Assessment Dashboard
Simplifying the reference condition approach for aquatic ecosystem assessments using benthic invertebrate communities
The Aquatic Ecosystem Assessment (AEA) Tool was developed in 2016. It provides an interactive dashboard and simplifies the complicated steps in performing aquatic ecosystem assessments using the reference condition approach (RCA). Users supply a table of benthic invertebrate community data, as well as relevant habitat data. The dashboard then calculated a wide array of summary metrics from the community data and provides a variety of visualization and transformation methods. If collection areas are identified as reference or exposed, a RCA can be performed using the Test Site Analysis (TSA) and Nearest-Neighbour site matching (NN). This dashboard provides many options for how these analysis can be performed, or provides heuristic algorithms for identifying suitable defaults. The final results are summarized using a series of informative graphics, ideal for visual story telling on the conditions of the aquatic community.
