Sampling & Monitoring Design for Natural Resources

Natural Resource Monitoring - Designing long-term monitoring studies for wildlife refuges in Alaska, where target frames are often measured in millions of hectares, access logistics can overwhelm all other considerations, natural variability can be tremendous, and populations may be highly mobile and/or difficult to detect, forces consideration of a number of key aspects of the design process that often remain in the background in more 'standard' applications. Efforts in this realm have so far focused on importing and publicizing methods developed in other fields, refining and developing new methods, and continuing education, especially with regard to non-sampling errors such as frame mismatch, etc. .

Recent or Current Projects

• General Methods

• Sampling and monitoring design for estimating soil carbon, a review of sampling and monitoring methods and issues prepared for an edited volume on carbon sequestration (Smith et al. 2007. Harnessing farms and forests in the low carbon economy: how to create, measure, and verify greenhouse gas. Duke University Press). A general overview and synthesis of standard sampling and monitoring designs; the final version was severely edited.
• Design choices and variance estimators for systematic sampling in natural resource monitoring
  
  (R code for unreplicated univariate systematic sampling variance estimators is available here)
• Sequential sampling design for patch occupancy models
• Non-sampling errors in wildlife sampling and monitoring
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  Monitoring Applications

• Designs and variance estimators for systematic sampling salmon escapement
  
  (R code for unreplicated univariate systematic sampling variance estimators is available here)
• Monitoring crevice-nesting seabirds using colony surface area as a metric
• (Longitudinal models) Trends in wintering marine birds, Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Alaska (with Mike Keim, UW QERM)
• (Multi-stage Mark-Recapture) Survival of Steller's eiders staging at Izembek Lagoon, Izembek NWR (with Abran Steele-Feldman, UW QERM)
• Double-observer distance estimation of Brown bear density at Togiak National Wildlife Refuge 2003/4 (with Brook Russell, Col. State Univ.)
• (Random Effects models) Effect of wildlife viewing on brown bear attendance, O'Malley River, Kodiak NWR (with Tony Fishbach) (3MB file)