Habitat suitability of the water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes, (Mart.) Solms, in some ecosystems of Anzali wetland watershed using generalize linear model

Abstract

Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is a free-floating aquatic plant and is known as one of the 100 most harmful invasive species. In the present research, 10 sampling sites were selected from various parts of the Anzali wetland watershed to study the habitat suitability of an invasive water hyacinth plant. 120 biotic data (60 presence samples and 60 absence samples) were monthly sampled with environmental variables (12 physical-chemical and structural variables) at each sampling site during one year. The results of the Mann-Whitney U test showed that except for the water and air temperature (p > 0.05 for both variables), there were significant differences among other variables (acidity, nitrate, orthophosphate, electrical conductivity, salinity, water depth, water flow velocity, dissolved oxygen, water turbidity, and bicarbonate) and presence and absence of water hyacinth (p 0.05 for both variables), there was a significant difference between the occurrence probability pattern of presence/absence of plant in the sampling sites with the total of 10 variables (p < 0.01 for all variables).

Keywords

• habitat suitability
• linear model
• macrophyte
• water hyacinth