Finding patterns in time and space-exploratory approaches
pilot studies and those designed to provide baseline data often serve the additional interest of identifying patterns in seagrass beds. cyclical variation in seagrass distributions has been studied at a range of spatial scales using semivariance or multifractal analysis species associates may be patterned in ecological communities, and these species patterns may be arranged in space in response to gradients in the substratum, such as depth or percentage organic matter. multivariate analyses such as discriminate analysis, clustering algorithms, or ordination techniques may be valuable to identify and present patterns for example, using multi-dimensional scaling for definition and contrast, the infaunal community associated with seagrass beds created as mitigation was shown to develop over time