DLM under a blanket

It's a snow day on campus, which means a hot cup of coffee at home next to the fire...

Another brutal dusting of snow for the 2016-2017 Seattle winter season.

Just kidding. I'm here at the office, using the surrounding tranquility as inspiration for a high-productivity work day. I figured this would be a good opportunity to write an initial blog post, especially given that my current analyses are primarily homework-based and sporadic in character. The current assignment is to use a dynamic linear model to analyze salmon stock recruitment data. If you're at all interested in state-space autoregressive modeling (tantalizing), you can find the primer here. If all goes to plan, I'll be posting some blog entries soon about how I'm using ARIMA models to analyze the USFWS mid-winter waterfowl survey data. Until then, I guess you'll have to settle for a brief explanation for why I'm starting a blog in the first place.


Over the past three years I've seen first hand how a breakdown in communication can cause major setbacks to management, project implementation, and policy. As scientists, we're taught to abstain from advocacy, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't engage with our audience. It's easy to share our work with other scientists as peer-reviewed journal articles and conference presentations. Unfortunately, the people who matter when it comes to project implementation - the taxpayers, policymakers, voters, journalists, community leaders - can't log onto Google Scholar and look up the latest issue of Ecological Applications. Even if they could, how might we expect them to interpret our analyses? It takes years of proper scientific training to absorb the life blood of ecology into our veins. Often, as scientists, we are over critical of those who don't understand our work, but only 40% of Americans have finished an associate's degree or above. The truth is, people aren't shying away from science, scientists are just out of touch with the everyday citizen.


I'm using this blog as an opportunity to practice sharing my research with the world in a way that's accessible, without sacrificing the scientific integrity of my dissertation. Most of my work is focused on salt marsh restoration in the Pacific Northwest, a topic that has gained momentum over the last few decades as agencies work to remove dams, dikes, levees, and shoreline armoring to improve the health of coastal habitats. The Nisqually Delta Restoration (shameless cover photo of yours truly) is the largest restoration project in Puget Sound to-date. My dissertation uses seven years of post-restoration datasets at this site, along with monitoring data from several other restored estuaries, to assess how effective coastal restoration is, and whether or not these ecosystems will be able to withstand climate change. I'm hoping to blend my research findings in with general commentary about how new techniques are being integrated into restoration science. Hopefully this keeps things on-topic without getting monotonous.


In any case, it's back to the grind! Here's to a productive and beautiful snow day!