Course Description

This customized population modeling short course will be conducted by Scott Ferson, a senior scientist at Applied Biomathematics (www.ramas.com).  For the purposes of the workshop, participants will have access to relevant RAMAS software. Participants may bring their own (PC, non-Vista) laptops and software will be distributed at the meeting under a day-long license.  Beginner to intermediate level.

Instructor

Scott Ferson Email: scott(at)ramas.com Phone: 1-631-751-4350, fax -3435 Applied Biomathematics, 100 North Country Road Setauket, New York 11733 USA

Biography   Scott Ferson is a senior scientist at Applied Biomathematics ( www.ramas.com). His research focuses on developing reliable mathematical and statistical tools for risk assessments and on methods for uncertainty analysis when empirical information is very sparse.    Scott holds a Ph.D. from the State University of New York. He has over 100 scholarly publications, including five books and several software packages in population modeling, environmental risk analysis and uncertainty propagation. He was a primary developer of several components of the RAMAS library of ecological software. His research has addressed quality assurance for Monte Carlo assessments, exact methods for detecting clusters in small data sets, back calculation methods for use in remediation planning, and distribution-free methods of risk analysis appropriate for use in information-poor situations.    Ferson is an adjunct professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University. He also serves on the editorial board of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment and has served on several expert advisory panels in the US and Europe.

Course Outline

The participant will be introduced to the use of ecological and environmental software to accomplish the following:

• Ecological engineering and the language of risk

• Multispecies assessments

• Species classification schemes

• Simple models when data are sparse

• Age and stage structure

• Density dependence

• Demographic ecotoxicology

• Temporal variability and catastrophes

• Spatial structure and habitat trends

• Data requirements and selecting a model

• Other resources for population modeling

• Model validation