Water Quality Relationships to Concentrations of Pfiesteria-like Organisms in Virginia Estuaries for 1998

A series of statistical analyses were performed to identify the relationship between abundance of dinoflagellates grouped as Pfiesteria-like organisms and a set of 25 water quality variables from May through October of 1998 at 41 estuarine locations. Although regions were identified in relation to seasonal density of cells present, there were no strong relationships to specific water quality variables. Factors that may have influenced these results included: a) several species were included in the group analyzed and this composite did not respond as a unit to changing environmental conditions; b) cell concentrations were low and there were a large number of zero counts; and; c) there were no marked changes involving increasing abundance during the study that could be related to environmental factors