Announcement and Call for Papers

TIES North American Regional Meeting

Measuring, Monitoring, and Modeling Environmental Resources

June 15 to 17, 2009

Corvallis, OR, USA

Tracking the quality and quantity of environmental resources is an important issue that involves the gamut of environmental sciences, as well as statisticians, mathematicians, and environmental managers. The focus of the conference will be on forests and fisheries, but talks dealing with other resources are welcome. Because of the regional significance of these two resources, a number of well-developed programs in the Pacific Northwest have explored issues of measuring, monitoring, and modeling them. Even so, many challenging issues remain in designing monitoring programs, and in analyzing and interpreting monitoring data.

Several monitoring programs in place in the Pacific Northwest have compiled some extraordinarily rich data sets for exploring questions of measuring, monitoring, and modeling environmental resources. The data sets were collected under a range of designs, from rigorous probability based surveys to very specific targeted surveys to convenience surveys. Many of these data sets are publicly available. For this Conference, potential participants are invited to exploit these data sets to illustrate or develop methodology to measure environmental characteristics, determine status, describe trend, and model relationships. Some of these data sets, together with metadata describing the objectives and design of the study that collected the data, are now available for download at http://www.science.oregonstate.edu/~madsenl/TIESNA2009/index.html. While participants are encouraged to illustrate methodology using one of these data sets, that is not a requirement.

Registration is now open at https://secure.oregonstate.edu/ocs/register.php?event=353. Registration includes a reception on Monday, June 15, refreshments for breaks, and lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday. Also included is dinner on Tuesday at Tyee Wine Cellars (http://www.tyeewine.com/). Please try to register by May 2; registration fees increase after that. Housing information is available on the registration page.

We have some funds to defray travel expenses for registered graduate students who present a paper at the conference, and who do not have other sources of travel funds. Please send a request to Don Stevens at stevens@stat.oregonstate.edu.

We encourage submissions covering any aspect of measuring, monitoring, or modeling an environmental resource. Abstracts are due no later than May 1, 2009. For further information, contact Don Stevens at 541-737-3587, stevens@stat.oregonstate.edu, or go to the conference website http://www.science.oregonstate.edu/~madsenl/TIESNA2009/index.html. Abstracts may be sent by email to stevens@stat.oregonstate.edu or mailed to Don Stevens, Statistics Department, 44 Kidder Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.