Author(s)

D.J. Trigg, W.J. Walley & S.J. Ormerod

Abstract

The paper describes the development of a prototype Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) that models acidification in Welsh Rivers, It was based on data from the 102 river sites surveyed in the 1995 Welsh Acid Waters Survey. The objectives of the study were: a) to test the suitability of BBNs for the diagnosis of river health; and b) to test the viability of a data-based approach to the development of a prototype. The results of performance tests on the model, based upon its ability to predict pH, aluminium concentration and trout density using macro- invertebrate data, are compared to those achieved by three multiple linear regression (MLR) models. The results of like-for-like tests on the MLR

Keywords