Wednesday, November 25, 2020

First QUERCA paper just published in Environmental Research Letters

“Improving uncertainty in forest carbon accounting for REDD+ mitigation efforts” by Ruth Yanai, Craig Wayson, Donna Lee, Andres Espejo, John Campbell, Mark Green, Jenna M. Zukswert, Shira Yoffe, Juliann Aukema, Andy Lister, Jim Kirchner, Javier Garcia Perez Gamarra. 2020. Environmental Research Letters, 15(12):4002 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abb96f.  This is a product of QUEST and also of QUERCA.

QUERCA (Quantifying Uncertainty Estimates and Risk in Carbon Accounting) was founded by Wayson, Yanai, Campbell and Green in 2019 to address the need to improve uncertainty calculations for country-level carbon accounting. Accounting for uncertainty is essential for assessing confidence in reductions of carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). Quantifying uncertainty requires technical expertise in error propagation, which is currently lacking, as shown by some countries reporting errors an order of magnitude smaller than the individual sources of error (see the paper just published). The reported uncertainty affects the payment a country can receive for reducing carbon emissions.  
QUERCA is currently funded by the US Department of State and US Agency for International Development. A survey is under development to assess the need for assistance in carbon accounting by countries participating in REDD+ programs. We will create peer-reviewed tools and approaches for error propagation that are well documented and easy to use by carbon accounting technicians and researchers.  Future goals of QUERCA will include building capacity among the users by sharing these tools and approaches via meetings, code sharing, bibliographies, and direct collaboration with participating programs.

Thursday, June 27, 2019

QUEST will have a session at AGU this year; please consider submitting an abstract by July 31.


The AGU Fall Meeting will take place December 9-13, 2019 in San Francisco. https://www2.agu.org/fall-meeting

B064 - Improving Estimates of Ecosystem Carbon Storage

Quantifying carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems remains challenging despite the need for strategic management of the global carbon balance. Forest biomass and forest soils can be highly heterogeneous and difficult to measure. Urban trees have been characterized using allometry from closed forests, which may result in bias. In agricultural systems, understanding the impact of land use practices on soil carbon changes remains a major research need. Fortunately, new technologies are improving estimates of natural variability, thereby reducing uncertainty. For example, terrestrial LiDAR can provide detailed characterization of live and dead wood pools. At the same time, methods for characterizing uncertainty in estimates are improving.  This session will highlight studies that are aimed at understanding the uncertainty in terrestrial carbon stocks, including quantifying spatial variability. It will also highlight novel data sets and quantitative methods used in these characterizations.

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Announcing the Stochastic Uncertainty Estimator (SUE)


Looking for a way to start to explore uncertainty in a calculation or a model?  QUEST has launched an on-line tool for uncertainty propagation!  The Stochastic Uncertainty Estimator (SUE) is a program developed by Mark E. Harmon and his colleagues in the early 2000's. With funding from QUEST, Keith Olsen has created a web-based interface for SUE.  The following link allows you to download the software, create and run files for your projects, and download the source code (http://uncertaintyestimator.org/).   

Friday, February 10, 2017

Two QUEST-sponsored uncertainty papers were published on Feb 6 and Feb 7:

Daly, C., M.E. Slater, J.A. Roberti, S.H. Laseter, and L.W. Swift Jr. 2017. High-resolution precipitation mapping in a mountainous watershed: ground truth for evaluating uncertainty in a national precipitation dataset. International Journal of Climatology, DOI: 10.1002/joc.4986

At one time, Coweeta Hydrological Laboratory had over 100 precipitation collectors, which were used to inform interpolation of a reduced monitoring scheme.  These spatially intensive data made it possible to test the predictions of the PRISM national-scale gridded precipitation dataset and quantify sources of uncertainty.

Csavina, J., J.A. Roberti, J.R. Taylor, adn H.W. Loescher. 2017. Traceable measurements and calibration: a primer on uncertainty analysis. Ecosphere, 8(2) e01683, DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.1683

This paper describes the approach used by NEON, the National Ecological Observatory Network, to uncertainty analysis, and includes a glossary of terms.  Bone up on accuracy, precision, and trueness!

Monday, November 7, 2016

QUEST at the AGU Fall Meeting, December 12-16, 2016 in San Francisco

The QUEST Session at American Geophysical Union merged with three other proposed sessions to get a full day of talks, Monday December 12, in Moscone West 2004.
Quantifying Uncertainties and Merging Observations, Experiments, and Models for Improving Estimation, Mapping, and Forecasting of Terrestrial Ecosystem Dynamics I and II.  Session: B11J and B12C

The first three talks and one late morning talk were part of the original QUEST session:

08:00  Why Quantify Uncertainty in Ecosystem Studies: Obligation versus Discovery Tool? Mark E. Harmon, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, United States

08:15  High-Resolution Precipitation Mapping in a Mountainous Watershed: Ground Truth for Evaluating Uncertainty in a National Precipitation Dataset.  Christopher Daly1, Melissa E. Slater2, Joshua A Roberti2, Stephanie H. Laseter3 and Lloyd W. Swift3, (1)PRISM Climate Group, College of Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, United States, (2)National Ecological Observatory Network, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, USDA Forest Service, Otto, NC, United States

08:30  What if the Hubbard Brook weirs had been built somewhere else? Spatial uncertainty in the application of catchment budgets.  Scott W Bailey, US Forest Service Durham, Durham, NH, United States

12:05  From Small Forest Inventory Plots to Regional Biomass Estimates: Dealing with Uncertainty from Inventory Sampling by Focusing on Trees Instead of Biomass. Bradley Tomasek1, Erin M Schliep2, Alan E. Gelfand1 and James S Clark1, (1)Duke University, Durham, NC, United States, (2)University of Missouri Columbia, Columbia, MO, United States

The following presentations are posters, please visit them in Moscone South from 1:40 to 6:00.  

Manoj Kc1,2, Kim Winton3, Michael A Langston3 and Yiqi Luo1, (1)University of Oklahoma Norman Campus, Norman, OK, United States, (2)New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Dept. Earth & Environmental Science, Hydrology Program,, Socorro, NM, United States, (3)USGS South Central Climate Science Center, Norman, OK, United States

B13E-0666 How to Avoid Errors in Error Propagation: Prediction Intervals and Confidence Intervals in Forest Biomass.  Paul Lilly1, Ruth D. Yanai2, Hannah L Buckley3, Bradley S Case3, Richard C Woollons4, Robert J Holdaway5 and James Johnson6, (1)Spatial Informatics Group, LLC, Alameda, CA, United States, (2)SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY, United States, (3)Lincoln University, Lincoln, New Zealand, (4)University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, (5)Landcare Research NZ, Lincoln, New Zealand, (6)University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

B13E-0667 Quantifying uncertainty in carbon and nutrient pools of coarse woody debris.  Craig Robert See, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States, John L Campbell, USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Vallejo, CA, United States, Shawn Fraver, University of Maine, School of Forest Resources, Orono, ME, United States, Grant M Domke, US Forest Service St. Paul, St. Paul, MN, United States, Mark E. Harmon, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, United States, Jennifer D Knoepp, Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, U.S. Forest Service, Otto, NC, United States and Christopher W Woodall, US Forest Service Durham, Northern Research Station, Durham, NH, United States

B13E-0668 Uncertainty Propagation in Predictions of Hydraulic Parameters Based on the Pedotransfer Functions. Boris Faybishenko, Tetsu K Tokunaga, Yongman Kim and Deb Agarwal, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, United States

B13E-0669 Uncertainty in a certain world: standardized approach to evaluating uncertainty in measurement results. Janae Lynn Csavina and Joshua A Roberti, National Ecological Observatory Network, Boulder, CO, United States

B13E-0670 Sources of variability in tissue chemistry in northern hardwood species. Yang Yang1, Ruth D. Yanai2, Farrah Roxanne Fatemi3, Carrie R Levine4, Paul Lilly5 and Russell Briggs2, (1)State University of New York Environmental Science and Forestry, Environmental Science, Syracuse, NY, United States, (2)SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY, United States, (3)St. Michael’s College, Colchester, VA, United States, (4)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (5)Spatial Informatics Group, LLC, Alameda, CA, United States

B13E-0671 Interannual variability, correlated errors, and trend detection of evapotranspiration at AmeriFlux sites.  Angela Jean Rigden and Guido Salvucci, Boston University, Earth and Environment, Boston, MA, United States

B13E-0672  ‘spup’ – An R Package for Analysis of Spatial Uncertainty Propagation and Application to Trace Gas Emission Simulations.  Kasia Sawicka1, Lutz Breuer2, Tobias Houska2, Ignacio Santabarbara Ruiz3 and Gerard B.M. Heuvelink1, (1)Wageningen University, Soil Geography and Landscape group, Wageningen, Netherlands, (2)Justus Liebig University Giessen, Institute for Landscape Ecology and Resources Management, Giessen, Germany, (3)Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe, Germany

B13E-0673  Evaluating Random Error of Long-term, Multi-plot Flux Gradient Measurements of Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions.  Shannon E Brown1, Claudia Wagner-Riddle1 and Muhammad Firdaus Sulaiman2, (1)University of Guelph, School of Environmental Sciences, Guelph, ON, Canada, (2)University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

Olivia Bartlett, University of New Hampshire Main Campus, Durham, NH, United States, Scott W Bailey, US Forest Service Durham, Durham, NH, United States and Mark J Ducey, University of New Hampshire (UNH), Department of Natural Resources & Environment, Durham, NH, United States

B13E-0675 A geospatial framework for improving the vertical accuracy of elevation models in Florida’s coastal Everglades.  Hannah Cooper1, Caiyun Zhang1 and Matthew Sirianni2, (1)Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, United States, (2)Florida Atlantic University, Geosciences, Davie, FL, United States

B13E-0676 Quantifying the impact of the longitudinal dispersion coefficient parameter uncertainty on the physical transport processes in rivers.  Vivian Veronica Camacho Suarez, James Shucksmith and Alma Schellart, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom



B13E-0677 Forested hillslope water budget uncertainty: understanding the pathway from precipitation to biota to stream discharge. Heather Nicole Speckman1, Daniel Beverly2, Jason Mercer2, Suman Chitrakar3, Drew Thayer3, Bradley Carr4, Andrew Parsekian5 and Brent E Ewers2, (1)University of Wyoming, WyCEHG, Laramie, WY, United States, (2)University of Wyoming, Botany, Laramie, WY, United States, (3)University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, United States, (4)University of Wyoming, Department of Geology and Geophysics, Laramie, WY, United States, (5)University of Wyoming, Geology, Laramie, WY, United States

Friday, November 4, 2016

Uncertainty Workshop at the ILTER OSM

QUEST sponsored an Uncertainty Workshop at the ILTER Open Science Meeting in South Africa October 9-13.  The workshop consisted of four modules:  (1) Measurement Uncertainty, presented by Hank W. Loescher and Janae L. Csavina; (2) Experimental Design for Long-Term Monitoring, presented by Christina L. Staudhammer;  (3) Monte Carlo Error Propagation, presented by Oswaldo Carrillo and Ruth D. Yanai; and (4) Uncertainty quantification: analysis of NEON and other biodiversity network data with hierarchical Bayes, presented by James S. Clark.   The workshop was well received by the 66 delegates who attended.  More information, including the materials for each of the modules, can be found here.

Friday, September 2, 2016

SSSAJ Special Issue: Quantifying Uncertainty in Forest Ecosystem Studies

We are now accepting contributions to a special issue of Soil Science Society of America Journal called "Quantifying Uncertainty in Forest Ecosystem Studies." 

Papers may address any source of uncertainty in forest ecosystems, including spatial and temporal variation, measurement error, model uncertainty, and model selection error.  Topics may include pools and turnover rates in soil, necromass, and living biomass. Papers that address how these uncertainties influence monitoring designs or affect management and policy decisions are also welcome.  

Submit your paper through Manuscript Central.  Select Quantifying Uncertainty in Forest Ecosystem Studies in the menu for the type of submission.