Title: A CAREER of STATISTICS in AGRICULTURE, ECOLOGY and the ENVIRONMENT
1A CAREER of STATISTICSinAGRICULTURE, ECOLOGY
and the ENVIRONMENT
- N. Scott Urquhart
- Senior Research Scientist
- Department of Statistics
- Colorado State University
2ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A STATISTICIANS WORK
- Many ways a statistician can contribute
- Work as a team member
- Help in many ways to get good data
- Assist in analysis and interpretation
- Personally rewarding
- Contributed to solving relevant societal
problems - Interesting, even fun
- On-site work to understand problems
- Investigators really appreciate site visits
- Financially adequate
3WHAT IS NSU INVOLVED IN RIGHT NOW?
- Im mainly an administrator now
- But still do some data analysis and research
- People implementing environmental monitoring
programs - Want to know how good a study will be
- Even though data will be gathered for years
- Domain From multiple watersheds to the Western
States - Measures
- Water quality From acid rain responses to
bug population - Forest health
- Bird populations in the National Parks
- Summaries
- Status how big is the response
- mainly as a cumulative distribution function
- Trends How is the response changing thought
time?
4EVALUATING PERFORMANCE OF A MONITORING DESIGN -
HOW?
- Power Probability(detecting a trend of a
specific size) - Prob(Rejecting HO for a specific point in HA)
- Variance of estimated regression coefficients
can be decomposed in the contributions of - River drainages,
- Specific sites (randomly selected)
- Year effects
- Unexplained remainder
- Illustration bull trout population sizes in
Montana - Collaborator Monitoring scientist at the
National Marine Fisheries Service, La Jolla, CA - NSU statistical models worked illustration
- Colleague software for doing power
calculations in this - situation
5POWER TO DETECT TRENDVARYING YEAR EFFECT AND
TEMPORAL DESIGN
6MAJOR PROJECTS NSU HAS BEEN INVOLVED WITH
- Sugar beet investigations
- Rural development
- Beef cattle feeding
- Commodity futures hedging
- Breeding onions for pink root resistance
- Using waste products Sewage sludge Cesium
138 gt ? - Catching
- Deer in a net
- Desert bighorn sheep
- Deer fawns
- Electric meter testing
- Using computers to assist in learning
7MAJOR PROJECTS NSU HAS BEEN INVOLVED WITH
continued
- Sampling sales tax records
- Program evaluation for the Grand Canyon
Monitoring and Research Center (GCMRC) - Designing and implementing a vegetation study
for GCMRC - Designing studies for EPAs Environmental
Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) - Arctic contaminants Research Program
- Designing vegetation studies in Arctic Alaska
8MAJOR PROJECTS NSU HAS BEEN INVOLVED WITH
continued
- Sampling sales tax records
- Program evaluation for the Grand Canyon
Monitoring and Research Center (GCMRC) - Designing and implementing a vegetation study
for GCMRC - Designing studies for EPAs Environmental
Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) - Arctic contaminants Research Program
- Designing vegetation studies in Arctic Alaska
9PROGRAM EVALUATION FOR THE GRAND CANYON
MONITORING AND RESEARCH CENTER (GCMRC)
- Objective
- Review the near-river terrestrial research
program of GCMRC - External panel
- Biologists quantitative scientists
- Academic and federal employees
- From Glen Canyon Dam through the Grand Canyon,
nearly to Lake Meade - Evaluation panel of 8
- 11-day raft trip through the Grand Canyon
- Accompanied by 9 people who had conducted
research along the river
10MAP OF THE GRAND CANYON AREA
11THE PANEL SUPPORT CREW
12THE BEGINNING
13THE REAL START _at_ LEES FERRY
14CAMPED LIKE ANY OTHER TRIP
15WE SAW MAJESTIC SCENERY
16WENT THROUGH RAPIDS !!!!!!!!
17THE END WAS IN SIGHT
18_at_ THE END
19A CLOSER LOOK _at_ VASEYS PARADISE
20THE END OF A HIKE FROM TAPEATS
CREEKTHROUGHSURPRISE VALLEYTODEER CREEK
21WE SAW DESERT BIGHORN 4 PLACES - ANOTHER POSSIBLE
IMPACTOR
22DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING A VEGETATION STUDY FOR
GCMRC
- Objective Locate and lay out vegetation
transects - NSU selected 100 potential sites
- Randomly, subject to spatial restrictions
- Each potential site was
- Determined to be vertically faced no transect
- Or the transect was laid out and documented
- Result
- 20 sites to be visited annually
- 40 sites to be visited only once every three
years
23NO VEGETATION HERE!!!(MILE 135.2)
24ROCKY, BUT VEGETATED SITE _at_ 12.3
25A SANDY SITE _at_ 171.5
26A VERY ROCKY SITE _at_ 95.0
27THE CREW AFTER TWO WEEKS ON THE RIVER
28DESIGNING STUDIES FOR EPAs ENVIRONMENTAL
MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT PROGRAM (EMAP)
- Distinctive EMAP perspective
- Define the population of interest
- Conduct a probability survey of IT
- Carefully define the sampling frame
- Variability probability selection of sites, but
with spatial balance - Carefully define the responses to be evaluated
- Train field crews well
- Manage the data well while maintaining a good
audit trail - Learn from past mistakes, throughout
- NSU has been very involved with the process for
evaluating bugs in streams
29CADDIS FLIES
30MESA CREEK (ORC 20)
31SURBER SAMPLER IN USE
32COLLECTING IN A STREAM
33FIELD CLEANING OF A COLLECTION
34BAGGING PRESERVING A COLLECTION
35BAGGED COLLECTION - LAB
36EVALUATING THE EVALUATION ERROR
- Here, there is no way to repeat the process of
pulling clumps apart gt Repeated measures
are impossible - Alternative Split collections
- 5050
- Separately evaluate each half
- Examine similarity of splits to study
evaluation error
37COLLECTIONEMPTIED INTO A BEAKER PRIOR TO
SPLITTING
38PLACING A COLLECTION IN THE SPLITTER
39SPLITTING A COLLECTION
40COMPLETED SPLIT
41SPLIT COLLECTION READY FOR ENUMERATION
42MAP OF ALASKA
43EPAs ARCTIC CONTAMINANTS RESEARCH PROGRAM
- Reality Arctic haze has increased greatly over
the past 30 years. - Apparent origin
- Northern Europe
- Including the former Soviet Union.
- Arctic haze contains lots of bad stuff
- Question
- Has much of this bad stuff been deposited in
Arctic Alaska? - Approach
- Use lichens as a natural accumulator
- Collect specific lichens across a possible
gradient of sites. - NSU Selected general site location developed
local site selection criteria
44BEGINNINGS OF TRIP INTO THE ALASKA NATIONAL
WILDLIKE REFUGE BETTLES, AK
- WHERE IS THIS FLOAT PLANE SUPPOSE TO TAKE OFF???
45APPROACHING SCHRADER LAKE IN ANWR
46FLOAT PLANE LEAVING US IN AT SCHRADER LAKE IN ANWR
47EVALUATING VEGETATION IN ANWR
48THE WAY OUT FROM SCHRADER LAKE
49DESIGNING VEGETATION STUDIES IN ARCTIC ALASKA
50TEAMS LEARNING ABOUT PERMAFROST
51VIEW FROM OUTSIDE - REFRIGERATED ENTRANCE
52IN THE TUNNEL
53AN OLD ICE WEDGE
54A SEGMENT OF THE TRANS-ALASKA PIPELINE
55A HILLSIDE ON THE NORTH SLOPE
OR IS THAT ALL?
56MUSKOX ALONG THE HAUL ROAD
57RESEARCH SITE AFTER JUNE SNOW
58LOOKING TOWARD THE RESEARCH SITE FROM INSIDE THE
BROOKS RANGE
59TYPICAL VALLEY BOTTOM (NOTE MOOSE IN CENTER)
60GENERAL GOALS OF R4D
- Develop ecophysiology models of plant growth on
the North Slope - To support more general models to allow
evaluation of likely impact of energy-related
development - NSU On-site experimental and sampling design
- For many studies
61(No Transcript)
62HILLTOP AND NEARBY STONE STRIPE
63STONE STRIPES AND EQUIPMENT FOR MEASURING
PHOTOSYNTHESIS RATE
64POWER FOR MEASURING PHOTOSYNTHESIS RATE
65EQUIPMENT FOR MEASURING PHOTOSYNTHESIS RATE