Statistical ecology for large scale ecological monitoring – an applied perspective

Rhona Rodger
Monday 5 December 2022
Date: 8 March 2023
Time: 2:00 pm

Speakers: Susan Jarvis/Peter Henrys, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology

Abstract: To effectively inform policy around how we should best manage our environment we need to be able to provide information on the state and change of ecological resources at national scale. Effective large scale ecological monitoring is hugely resource intensive, and must often deliver to multiple monitoring objectives at the same time. For a few taxa we have national monitoring schemes with controlled designs, but more often we have a range of data sources of varying design, quality and extent. A key issue is how to best integrate these to make the most from the data we have, whilst accounting for known and unknown biases. I’ll discuss progress we’ve made in understanding when and how to integrate data sources and some of the challenges we face. We also need to inform new data collection, and have been developing approaches to use adaptive sampling designs at national scale. I’ll discuss an ongoing project using an adaptive sampling design in a citizen science context where we’ve investigated a range of different optimisation methods to improve the information content of new data whilst retaining community engagement.

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