Quantifying Uncertainty at IUFRO 2014

IUFRO's Congress Scientific Committee invites abstract submissions for the 2014 IUFRO World Congress: Sustaining Forests, Sustaining People, The Rose of Research, to be held October 5-11, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

Please consider submitting abstracts to session #58 Quantifying Uncertainty in Forest Measurements and Models: Approaches and Applications, offered under the Congress Theme Forests and Climate Change, to share approaches to analyzing uncertainty in forest measurements and give examples of applications of uncertainty in above- and belowground estimates of forest biomass, carbon, and nutrient pools and fluxes, ans well as other ecosystem attributes. Oral and poster presentations will be selected from the submitted abstracts.

QUEST will also have a sub-plenary session, The Importance of Quantifying Uncertainty in Managing Forests. Invited presenters will describe sources of uncertainty in estimates of forest carbon and nutrient pools and fluxes, including natural spatial and temporal variation, measurement error, model uncertainty, and model selection, and address how these uncertainties can guide monitoring designs and affect management and policy decision.

The Sub-Plenary and the Technical Session are being organized by Ruth Yanai, SUNY-ESF, USA; George Gertner, University of Illinois, USA; David Paré, Canadian Forest Service; Peter Clinton, Scion, New Zealand; and Bogdan Strimbu, Louisiana Tech University, USA.

English language abstracts (http://iufro2014.com/scientific-program/abstract-submissions) are due before the site closes October 15; abstracts may also be submitted in Spanish or French, but should be submitted by 15 September, to allow sufficient time for translation prior to review by session coordinators and the Congress Scientific Committee. Also note that all presenting authors (oral or poster presentations) must register for the Congress by April 30, 2014 – failure to do so will result in the presentation’s deletion from both the program and the abstracts volume of The International Forestry Review.

Please join us in Salt Lake City in October 2014! For more information, visit http://iufro2014.com/

News Flash: QUEST presentation in France

Ruth Yanai presented a talk at the final meeting of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action FP0803: 14 May 2013,  Bordeaux,  France.  The subject of the COST Action was Belowground Carbon Turnover in European forests.  The talk gives an overview of Quantifying Uncertainty in Ecosystem Studies, with attention to precipitation inputs, streamwater outputs, biomass accumulation, and change in soil stores, with examples of applications of uncertainty analysis to evaluating monitoring intensity, filling gaps with minimal uncertainty, identifying the greatest sources of uncertainty, and determining detectable differences.

Slides are available here.

Collaborators needed: data gaps in precipitation and streamflow

All long term datsets contain missing or unusable data (gaps).  While many of these gaps are inevitable, it is not possible to simply omit missing values when calculating solute fluxes from precipitation or streamflow.  The uncertainty associated with gap-filling estimates is not commonly reported or propagated into these  flux estimates.  We hope to characterize the causes of these gaps across sites for both volume and solute chemistry in long-term precipitation and streamflow datasets.  To quantify the uncertainty associate with different gap-filling methods, we will apply them to a series of "fake gaps," and compare the estimates with measured values.

 Weather events can cause gaps in long-term datasets.  (D. Buso)

To do this we need datasets!  We're interested in hearing form potential co-authors with streamflow and precipitation datasets to discuss the frequency and causes of gaps, and how they fill them.  We are especially in need of solute concentration datasets.  We're also interested in hearing from statistically minded individuals with new ideas on how to quantify the uncertainty associated with these gaps.

Please contact Craig See at crsee@syr.edu for more information.

QUEST is now an NSF Research Coordination Network

As of March 2013, Quantifying Uncertainty in Ecosystem Studies (QUEST) is supported by the National Science Foundation as a Research Coordination Network.  The five-year grant will allow the QUEST network to better support activities that advance the application of uncertainty analysis in ecosystem studies.  Efforts will focus on outreach and research on quantifying uncertainty in five topic areas important to ecosystem studies: atmospheric deposition, stream water export, biomass, soils, and ecosystem budgets.

Outreach will target ecosystem scientists through workshops at professional meetings and periodic webinars, each addressing issues in uncertainty in one of the five topic areas listed above.  QUEST has a website at http://www.quantifyinguncertainty.org, which already includes sample code, links to papers, and news announcements.  We will be developing discussion boards, wikis, and tutorials.

QUEST will support efforts to clarify approaches to uncertainty analysis, illustrate its use in evaluating monitoring designs, and address issues of detecting change over time.  QUEST will help to identify problems to be addressed by focus groups in specific topic areas.   The focus groups will produce QUEST funded open-access publications to be made available on the website.  We are also assembling an advisory board of statisticians who will assist in education and collaborate on research projects.

Our goal in the first year is to get the word out and recruit participants.  Please feel free to pass on this announcement, and please send us ideas for other avenues for outreach.

The QUEST Steering Committee:

Ruth Yanai (Coordinator), John Campbell (Information Management), Mark Green (Statistical Coordinator), Chris Daly (Precipitation), Rick Hooper (Streamflow), Jim Clark (Vegetation), Dan Richter (Soils), and Mark Harmon (Ecosystem Budgets)

Email us at QUEST <quantifyinguncertainty@gmail.com> to join our mailing list.

Position as listed filled. Contact us about possible opening for Spring 2014.

Ruth Yanai at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) is recruiting students to start in Fall 2013 or Spring 2014.  We have made progress quantifying uncertainty in estimates of forest biomass and stream loads and are also working on wet deposition and changes in soil storage.  There are currently research opportunities associated with each of these areas. 

In addition to the primary research with QUEST, there are opportunities for involvement in other projects associated with MELNHE (Multi-Element Limitation in Northern Hardwood Ecosystems) in the White Mountains.  MELNHE sites are located at Bartlett Experimental Forest, Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, and Jeffers Brook (USFS).  http://www.esf.edu/melnhe

A background in ecology, statistics, and programming would be valuable assets.  Funding will include tuition waiver, stipend, and health insurance, and consist of a combination of research and teaching assistantships.  Please contact Heather Engelman at forestecology@esf.edu if you are interested in applying.  Preference will be given to students available to start with the 2013 summer field season in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

QUEST Paper in Journal of Forestry

QUEST Authors Ruth Yanai, Carrie Rose Levine, Mark Green, and John Campbell have published an article in this month’s Journal of Forestry titled “Quantifying uncertainty in forest nutrient budgets”

ABSTRACT: Nutrient budgets for forested ecosystems have rarely included error analysis, in spite of the importance of uncertainty to interpretation and extrapolation of the results. Uncertainty derives from natural spatial and temporal variation and also from knowledge uncertainty in measurement and models. For example, when estimating forest biomass, researchers commonly report sampling uncertainty but rarely propagate the uncertainty in the allometric equations used to estimate tree biomass, much less the uncertainty in the selection of which allometric equations to use. Change over time may have less uncertainty than a single measurement, if the measures are consistently biased, as by the use of inaccurate allometric equations or soil sampling techniques. Quantifying uncertainty is not as difficult as is sometimes believed. Here, we describe recent progress in quantifying uncertainty in biomass, soils, and hydrologic inputs and outputs, using examples from the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, New Hampshire, USA.

Click here to download the pdf. 

QUEST Workshop at LTER All Scientists Meeting

Members of QUEST held a two hour workshop entitled “Quantifying Uncertainty in Ecosystem Studies” at the 2012 LTER All Scientists Meeting.  The two hour discussion-based workshop started with a round of introductions in which the 40 participants identified their system of study, and the biggest source of uncertainty they face.  The rest of the time was devoted by ten “lightening round” presentations on uncertainty in different ecosystem components (see presenters below).  Each five minute talk was followed up by a group discussion.   We received positive feedback from many of the workshop participants, and a proposal has been submitted for an organized oral session at next years ESA conference in Minneapolis. Full meeting notes are available for download below

List of presenters:

John Campbell:  Intro to QUEST, Participant introductions (what's your biggest uncertainty?)
Harmon:  Intro to sources of uncertainty
Adam Skibbe: Precipitation Uncertainty

Xuesong Zhang: Precipitation Uncertainty
John Battles: Biomass Uncertainty
Mark Green: Streamflow Uncertainty
Ruth Yanai: Uncertainty in Soils
Jeff Taylor: NEON products and their uncertainty
Craig See: Uncertainty in Data Gaps
Carrie Rose Levine: Monitoring Uncertainty