The BenthoVAL project will develop and validate methods based on taxonomic composition and Sediment Profile Imagery with the overall objective of assessing the EcoQ of French coastal metropolitan waters. BenthoVAL will largely rely on the analysis and valuation of the Benthic Macrofauna Database (BMDB) put together by the RÉseau des Stations et Observatoires MARins (RESOMAR, INSU, CNRS). The BMDB spans a period of 50 years and covers France’s entire metropolitan coastline. It covers 106 datasets and contains 9990 samples.

Description

The selected candidate will carry out tasks related to the analysis of selected subsets of community data from the BMDB in order to generating an assessment of EcoQ of benthic habitats in the French metropolitan coastal waters. In order to do so, he/she will rely on an extensive review of the literature to: 1. Select a set of biotic indices based on their characteristics, pertinence and frequency of use. 2. Compute the values of those indices and assess their correlations within selected data subsets. 3. Develop (metrics, thresholds of conversion in EcoQ based on the concept of reference station) a new biotic index based on the sensitivity/tolerance concept. 4. Test and validate this new index on subsets from the BMDB through comparisons with existing biotic indices and independent assessments of the EcoQ of benthic habitats (sediment profiling). 5. Use this new index to describe the current EcoQ of benthic habitats in French metropolitan coastal waters.

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