Maintenance of intact sediment box cores as laboratory mesocosms

摘要

Mesocosms consisting of physically and biologically intact segments of natural communities are an ideal compromise between signle species tests and ecosystem experiments in the assessment of sediment contamination. Therefore, large intact sediment cores, as mesocosms with naturally co-adapted communities, would allow sediment contamination to be assessed using the replicability and statistical power of laboratory techniques, while retaining much of the ecological realism of field studies.