QUEST Workshop at the LTER All Scientists Meeting a Success

Last week QUEST held a working group at the LTER ASM in Estes Park, CO, titled “Sources of Uncertainty in Ecosystem Monitoring.”  The first hour of the working group consisted of six brief presentations on different aspects of uncertainty in ecosystem monitoring, each followed by a similar lightning round discussion. The second hour consisted of a longer group discussion, and at the end participants were invited to take a survey on how they deal with uncertainty in their own research. We received positive feedback from many participants, and plan to use the results of the survey as part of a review article on current practices for uncertainty in ecosystem ecology.

List of presenters:

·        Ruth Yanai (SUNY-ESF): A brief history of QUEST; Uncertainty in the Hubbard Brook nitrogen budget

·        Craig See (University of Georgia): Gaps: why they occur, and what we can do about them.

·        John Campbell (USFS): Uncertainty in the net hydrologic flux of calcium in a paired-watershed harvesting study.

·        Josh Roberti (NEON): Connecting uncertainty estimates and QA/QC methods.

·        Melissa Slater (NEON): Examining spatial patterns of precipitation in complex terrain.

·        Carrie Levine (UC Berkeley): Using Bayesian hierarchical models to estimate forest demographic processes.