An ecological assessment of the United States mid-Atlantic region using rank frequency distributions based on watershed quintiles

Patil, G.P. and Taillie, C. and Vraney, R. (2002) An ecological assessment of the United States mid-Atlantic region using rank frequency distributions based on watershed quintiles. Community Ecology, 3 (1). pp. 1-8. ISSN 1585-8553

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Abstract

When working with raw data for multiple environmental indicators, it can be difficult to assess quality or 'health' because of the large number of indicators and inconsistencies among the indicators. By grouping the raw data into rankings, the data become more manageable and more comprehensible. We do not, however, want to lose information as a result of the groupings. It is possible to assess the quality of grouping options graphically by seeing if the resulting assessments of 'health' are concordant with the raw data. This can be done through the use of CDF-index values, cumulative distribution function plots, parallel coordinates plots, and scatterplots. A major purpose of this paper is to present approaches and the graphics for comparison and prioritization based on quintiles used, in this case, for ecological assessment of a large region.

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