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nmfs-fish-tools / fishdictionary

A dictionary scheme for fisheries
https://connect.fisheries.noaa.gov/fishdictionary
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
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Term for relative measure of abundance (index vs. cpue) #5

Open kellijohnson-NOAA opened 2 years ago

kellijohnson-NOAA commented 2 years ago

While giving the presentation on input and output for FIMS there was a lot of tangential discussion surrounding the decision to use CPUE for everything rather than index. Some complaints were that not all measures of abundance are relative or a measure of catch standardized by effort. I was thinking that everything would be a CPUE because at some level you are always measuring effort but it is accounted for in some hidden way. I think that less people have a problem with index meaning multiple things beyond "index of population abundance". I searched the literature trying to find a different word and even in literature about bird, deer, and other animal populations it seems like they use "index" quite heavily. Do we have other options? Do people have a preference for one term over another?

kellijohnson-NOAA commented 2 years ago

Decided on 2022-03-04 to not use CPUE because the term is not necessarily inclusive of environmental time series data and other metrics involved in ecosystem-based management. But, we still need to decide if "index" is the best way forward of if a different term should be used. Anyone up for tackling this issue?

kellijohnson-NOAA commented 2 years ago

Trend appears to be an additional option that encapsulates index of abundance, catch-per-unit-effort, environmental time series.