Global climate change and unprecedented habitat destruction signals the urgency of biodiversity assessment. Considering these factors, biodiversity assessment should make the best of available data through estimation and extrapolation. The purpose of this study is to determine spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity for groundfish (commercially valuable fish species such as Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, haddock, Melanogrammus aeglefinus and yellowtail flounder, Limanda ferruginea) in the New England region. The specific research questions are: 1) what are the relationships between spatial and temporal scale and species richness? and 2) do these relationships differ when determined from either research surveys or commercial catches? Using data from the National Marie Fisheries Service bottom trawl survey and observed commercial otter trawls from 2003-2007, I quantify species richness patterns using rarefaction methods in a spatial and temporal analysis. The results of this analysis will be incorporated into a spatially-explicit statistical model to combine the survey and observer data to achieve greater spatial and temporal coverage over the study area. As a result, I will produce maps of fish biodiversity which I will ultimately utilize to evaluate the effectiveness of five large marine protected areas (MPAs) closed to bottom-trawling in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank.
