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January 1998 newsletter
ESA Statistical Ecology Section - January, 1998 newsletter
(This is also published in the January, 1998 Bull. Ecol. Soc. Amer.)
STATISTICAL ECOLOGY SECTION
Notes from the Chair
The Section on Statistical Ecology has been unusually active
over the past two years, and we owe a great deal to outgoing
Section Chair Aaron Ellison for this. His accomplishments
include:
* the co-organization with Philip Dixon of a highly
successful symposium on Bayesian Statistics at the 1995
meeting, which was published as a special feature in
Ecological Applications last year;
* the co-organization of the 1996 ASA/EPA/ESA/SBA
workshop on Environmental Change and Trend Detection, to be
published in Ecological Applications next year;
* the establishment of the STATSOC-L email alias, which
allows the membership to broadcast items of interest, such
as this newsletter, to a plurality of the section members
(the full address is statsoc-l@mhc.mtholyoke.edu);
* the organization of a very successful workshop on S-
plus at the 1997 ESA meeting.
In addition to the above efforts in which he was directly
involved, the section membership under his guidance also
sponsored a 1996 ESA symposium on permutation and
randomization techniques (organized by Marie-Josee Fortin)
and co-sponsored a session at the 1996 Joint Statistical
Meetings on Natural Resource Monitoring.
So, it is safe to say that the State of the Section is:
alive and kicking! Thank you, Aaron! We'll try to keep the
momentum going.
A number of activities are being planned for the coming
year, but their official announcements await approvals by
the relevant program committees. Incoming section Vice-
Chair Mark Taper has tackled the job of organizing what
promises to be a very thought- and discussion-provoking
symposium on the meaning of Statistical Evidence for 1998's
ESA Baltimore meeting. A truly impressive slate of speakers
have agreed to participate - keep your fingers crossed that
the ESA Program Committee approves this one, because you
won't want to miss it! In addition, plans are well underway
for a skills workshop on Mixed Models in Baltimore; I intend
to sign up for that one myself. Finally, the section has
plans to co-sponsor (with the ASA Section on Statistics and
the Environment) an invited papers session on Mixed and
Hierarchical Models in Ecology at the Joint Statistical
Meetings in Dallas. Luckily, next year the ASA and ESA
meetings will not be held the same week for a change: the
ASA meeting is August 9-13 in Dallas, the week after ESA.
Don Edwards
Dept. of Statistics
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Minutes
The annual meeting was held on August 10, 1997 at 5:30 PM in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. There were 15 members in
attendance. The meeting was called to order by the Chair,
Aaron Ellison.
Budget - The annual financial status from ESA Headquarters
showed that as of 7/1/97 the Section had slightly over $500.
There were questions about several charges made for copying
and postage for Section ballots and newsletters from
previous years. Don Phillips is following this up with ESA
Headquarters to clarify the finances.
Student Travel Award - A check for $200 for the student
travel award was presented to Nicholas Lewin, Iowa State
University, to support travel to the 1997 annual ESA
meeting, where he presented a paper with Mark Kaiser on
"Describing the random component of the species-area curve".
E-mail - Distribution of items of interest to members of the
Section continues to take place on STATSOC-L, through Aaron
Ellison. Aaron is trying to get this transferred to a list
server. There was some discussion about the use of STATSOC-
L, with general consensus on its continued use for Section
news items, and a forum for discussion by members of topics
of interest in statistical ecology. It would also be a
suitable forum for posting job announcements. The
distribution list was made up by entering the list of e-mail
addresses for Section members from the ESA Headquarters
records. A number of these e-mail addresses are either
incorrect or have been superseded, and mail cannot be
delivered to them. Section members who have not been
receiving occasional e-mail from STATSOC-L should contact
Aaron Ellison by e-mail (aellison@mtholyoke.edu) to add
their e-mail addresses to the distribution list.
Elections - The results of the recent balloting by mail were
announced, with Don Edwards (University of South Carolina)
being elected as the new Chair, and Mark Taper (Montana
State University) being elected as the new Vice-Chair, for
August, 1997 to August, 1999. At this point in the meeting,
the new Chair, Don Edwards, took over presiding.
Nominations for Secretary are being sought for elections to
take place next year for a 2 year term of August, 1998 to
August, 2000. Suggestions should be sent to the Section
Chair, Don Edwards (e-mail: edwards@math.sc.edu).
Newsletters - The suggestion was made that in addition to
publishing the Section newsletter in the Bulletin, it be
sent out on STATSOC-L. This will be done starting with the
January 1998 newsletter. John Porter (University of
Virginia) has also posted old newsletters through Fall 1995
on the Section's web page. Don Phillips will send copies of
the three newsletters since then to John to post on the web
page, and new newsletters will be routinely posted there as
well.
Statistical guidelines for ESA journals - The short version
of the statistical guidelines for ESA journals (see January
1997 newsletter, Bull. Ecol. Soc. Amer. 78(1): 75-77) has
now been included in the print version of the Instructions
to Authors in the ESA journals. However, the long version
is not yet on the ESA web page. Sam Scheiner will follow up
on this and try to get it posted there.
Symposium sponsorship - Symposium proposals for next year's
ESA meeting which were requesting Section sponsorship were
discussed. These included: (1) Jay Bai's proposal for
ecosystem temporal dynamic analysis; (2) Mark Taper's
proposal for the nature of statistical evidence in science;
and (3) Nicholas Lewin's proposal for issues in hierarchical
Bayes, longitudinal studies, and Markov chains. Aaron
Ellison indicated that due to the number of symposium
proposals relative to the number which can be scheduled, the
Program Committee prefers that Sections only sponsor one
proposal. After some discussion, there was consensus that
the proposal on the nature of statistical evidence would
have broad appeal across the society. It was moved,
seconded, and passed that the Section sponsor this symposium
proposal.
There was also a proposal from Susan Durham for a workshop
on SAS PROC MIXED. Aaron Ellison indicated that this year's
S-Plus symposium was a success and sold out both sessions
with 20 participants each, with a fee of $15. The
importance of keeping costs low in order to accommodate
graduate students was discussed. It was moved, seconded,
and passed to sponsor the proposal for the PROC MIXED
workshop, as long as the cost could be kept to $25 or less.
Adjournment - The meeting was adjourned at 6:30 PM.
Upcoming Meetings
International Biometric Society Spring Meeting -
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 27-April 1, 1998. Contact:
ENAR Conference Manager, 11250 Roger Bacon Drive, Suite 8,
Reston, VA 22090; fax: 703-435-4390
Joint Statistical Meetings - Dallas, Texas, August 9-
13, 1998. Contact American Statistical Association, 1429
Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314-3415; 703-684-1221;
meetings@amstat.org
Nominations Invited
Distinguished Statistical Ecologist Awards - To be
presented at the Seventh International Congress of Ecology,
Florence, Italy, July 19-25, 1998. The awards focus on
distinguished contributions made by academic, governmental,
and industrial scientists, working on problems in
statistical ecology and/or ecological statistics. Young
investigator awards intended to encourage greater
participation and study in statistics, ecology, and the
environment are also integral features of this initiative.
Nominations may consist of the nomination letter coupled
with a CV of the nominee and supporting letters, if any.
Six copies are requested on or before January 31, 1998. For
further details or to submit a nomination, contact:
Professor G.P. Patil
Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental
Statistics
Dept. of Statistics
The Pennsylvania State University
421 Thomas Building
University Park, PA 16802 USA
Newsletter Contributions
Please forward relevant items of information and
suggestions for this newsletter, preferably by e-mail,
including conference and workshop reports, upcoming meetings
of interest to section members, book reviews, short
discussions about a statistical ecology topic, etc. to Don
Phillips (don@mail.cor.epa.gov).
Don Phillips
Statistical Ecology Section Secretary
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
National Health and Environmental Effects Research
Laboratory
200 SW 35th St.
Corvallis, OR 97333
(541) 754-4485
Fax: (541) 754-4799
don@mail.cor.epa.gov