EnvironmetricsPub Date : 2024-08-06DOI: 10.1002/env.2873
Elizabeth S. Lawler, Benjamin A. Shaby
{"title":"Anthropogenic and meteorological effects on the counts and sizes of moderate and extreme wildfires","authors":"Elizabeth S. Lawler, Benjamin A. Shaby","doi":"10.1002/env.2873","DOIUrl":"10.1002/env.2873","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The growing frequency and size of wildfires across the US necessitates accurate quantitative assessment of evolving wildfire behavior to predict risk from future extreme wildfires. We build a joint model of wildfire counts and burned areas, regressing key model parameters on climate and demographic covariates. We use extended generalized Pareto distributions to model the full distribution of burned areas, capturing both moderate and extreme sizes, while leveraging extreme value theory to focus particularly on the right tail. We model wildfire counts with a zero-inflated negative binomial model, and join the wildfire counts and burned areas sub-models using a temporally-varying shared random effect. Our model successfully captures the trends of wildfire counts and burned areas. By investigating the predictive power of different sets of covariates, we find that fire indices are better predictors of wildfire burned area behavior than individual climate covariates, whereas climate covariates are influential drivers of wildfire occurrence behavior.</p>","PeriodicalId":50512,"journal":{"name":"Environmetrics","volume":"35 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/env.2873","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141945284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EnvironmetricsPub Date : 2024-07-22DOI: 10.1002/env.2872
Jay M. Ver Hoef, Eryn Blagg, Michael Dumelle, Philip M. Dixon, Dale L. Zimmerman, Paul B. Conn
{"title":"Marginal inference for hierarchical generalized linear mixed models with patterned covariance matrices using the Laplace approximation","authors":"Jay M. Ver Hoef, Eryn Blagg, Michael Dumelle, Philip M. Dixon, Dale L. Zimmerman, Paul B. Conn","doi":"10.1002/env.2872","DOIUrl":"10.1002/env.2872","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We develop hierarchical models and methods in a fully parametric approach to generalized linear mixed models for any patterned covariance matrix. The Laplace approximation is used to marginally estimate covariance parameters by integrating over all fixed and latent random effects. The Laplace approximation relies on Newton–Raphson updates, which also leads to predictions for the latent random effects. We develop methodology for complete marginal inference, from estimating covariance parameters and fixed effects to making predictions for unobserved data. The marginal likelihood is developed for six distributions that are often used for binary, count, and positive continuous data, and our framework is easily extended to other distributions. We compare our methods to fully Bayesian methods, automatic differentiation, and integrated nested Laplace approximations (INLA) for bias, mean-squared (prediction) error, and interval coverage, and all methods yield very similar results. However, our methods are much faster than Bayesian methods, and more general than INLA. Examples with binary and proportional data, count data, and positive-continuous data are used to illustrate all six distributions with a variety of patterned covariance structures that include spatial models (both geostatistical and areal models), time series models, and mixtures with typical random intercepts based on grouping.</p>","PeriodicalId":50512,"journal":{"name":"Environmetrics","volume":"35 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/env.2872","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141783339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EnvironmetricsPub Date : 2024-07-08DOI: 10.1002/env.2876
Greta Panunzi, Stefano Moro, Isa Marques, Sara Martino, Francesco Colloca, Francesco Ferretti, Giovanna Jona Lasinio
{"title":"Estimating the spatial distribution of the white shark in the Mediterranean Sea via an integrated species distribution model accounting for physical barriers","authors":"Greta Panunzi, Stefano Moro, Isa Marques, Sara Martino, Francesco Colloca, Francesco Ferretti, Giovanna Jona Lasinio","doi":"10.1002/env.2876","DOIUrl":"10.1002/env.2876","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Conserving oceanic apex predators, such as sharks, is of utmost importance. However, scant abundance and distribution data often challenge understanding the population status of many threatened species. Occurrence records are often scarce and opportunistic, and fieldwork aimed to retrieve additional data is expensive and prone to failure. Integrating various data sources becomes crucial to developing species distribution models for informed sampling and conservation purposes. The white shark, for example, is a rare but persistent inhabitant of the Mediterranean Sea. Here, it is considered <i>Critically Endangered</i> by the IUCN, while population abundance, distribution patterns, and habitat use are still poorly known. This study uses available occurrence records from 1985 to 2021 from diverse sources to construct a spatial log-Gaussian Cox process, with data-source specific detection functions and thinning, and accounting for physical barriers. This model estimates white shark presence intensity alongside uncertainty through a Bayesian approach with Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation (INLA) and the <span>inlabru</span> R package. For the first time, we projected species occurrence hot spots and landscapes of relative abundance (continuous measure of animal density in space) throughout the Mediterranean Sea. This approach can be used with other rare species for which presence-only data from different sources are available.</p>","PeriodicalId":50512,"journal":{"name":"Environmetrics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141575753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EnvironmetricsPub Date : 2024-07-05DOI: 10.1002/env.2864
Matthew Bonas, Abhirup Datta, Christopher K. Wikle, Edward L. Boone, Faten S. Alamri, Bhava Vyasa Hari, Indulekha Kavila, Susan J. Simmons, Shannon M. Jarvis, Wesley S. Burr, Daniel E. Pagendam, Won Chang, Stefano Castruccio
{"title":"Assessing predictability of environmental time series with statistical and machine learning models","authors":"Matthew Bonas, Abhirup Datta, Christopher K. Wikle, Edward L. Boone, Faten S. Alamri, Bhava Vyasa Hari, Indulekha Kavila, Susan J. Simmons, Shannon M. Jarvis, Wesley S. Burr, Daniel E. Pagendam, Won Chang, Stefano Castruccio","doi":"10.1002/env.2864","DOIUrl":"10.1002/env.2864","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The ever increasing popularity of machine learning methods in virtually all areas of science, engineering and beyond is poised to put established statistical modeling approaches into question. Environmental statistics is no exception, as popular constructs such as neural networks and decision trees are now routinely used to provide forecasts of physical processes ranging from air pollution to meteorology. This presents both challenges and opportunities to the statistical community, which could contribute to the machine learning literature with a model-based approach with formal uncertainty quantification. Should, however, classical statistical methodologies be discarded altogether in environmental statistics, and should our contribution be focused on formalizing machine learning constructs? This work aims at providing some answers to this thought-provoking question with two time series case studies where selected models from both the statistical and machine learning literature are compared in terms of forecasting skills, uncertainty quantification and computational time. Relative merits of both class of approaches are discussed, and broad open questions are formulated as a baseline for a discussion on the topic.</p>","PeriodicalId":50512,"journal":{"name":"Environmetrics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141575754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EnvironmetricsPub Date : 2024-07-01DOI: 10.1002/env.2870
Rosa M. Di Biase, Fulvia Mecatti
{"title":"Applying sequential adaptive strategies for sampling animal populations: An empirical study","authors":"Rosa M. Di Biase, Fulvia Mecatti","doi":"10.1002/env.2870","DOIUrl":"10.1002/env.2870","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Traditional sampling methods may prove inadequate when dealing with spatially clustered populations or when studying rare events or traits that are not easily detectable across the target population. When both scenarios occur simultaneously, adaptive sampling strategies can represent a viable option to enhance the detectability of cases of interest. This paper delves into the application of a novel class of sequential adaptive sampling strategies to animal surveys. These strategies, originally proposed for human population tuberculosis prevalence surveys, allow oversampling of the rare interest variables while managing on-field constraints. This ensures that the unfixed sample size, typical of adaptive sampling, does not compromise overall cost-effectiveness. We explore a strategy within this class that integrates an adaptive component into a Poisson sequential selection. The aim is twofold: to intensify the detection of cases by exploiting the spatial clustering and to provide a flexible framework for managing logistics and budget constraints. To illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of this Poisson-based sequential adaptive sampling strategy compared to traditional sampling methods, a simulation study was conducted on a blue-winged teal population in Florida, USA. The results showcase the benefits of the proposed strategy and open avenues for future methodological and practical improvements.</p>","PeriodicalId":50512,"journal":{"name":"Environmetrics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/env.2870","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141515687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EnvironmetricsPub Date : 2024-07-01DOI: 10.1002/env.2869
Rosa M. Di Biase, Marzia Marcheselli, Caterina Pisani
{"title":"Achieving spatial balance in environmental surveys under constant inclusion probabilities or inclusion density functions","authors":"Rosa M. Di Biase, Marzia Marcheselli, Caterina Pisani","doi":"10.1002/env.2869","DOIUrl":"10.1002/env.2869","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In environmental and ecological surveys, well spread samples can be easily obtained via widely adopted tessellation schemes, which yield equal first-order inclusion probabilities in the case of finite populations of areas or constant inclusion density functions in the case of continuous populations. In the literature, many alternative schemes that are explicitly tailored to select well spread samples have been proposed, but owing to their complexity, their use should be preferred only if they allow us to achieve a valuable gain in precision with respect to the tessellation schemes. Therefore, by means of an extensive simulation study, the performances of tessellation schemes and several specifically tailored schemes are compared under constant first-order inclusion probabilities or constant inclusion density functions.</p>","PeriodicalId":50512,"journal":{"name":"Environmetrics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/env.2869","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141515684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Categorical data analysis using discretization of continuous variables to investigate associations in marine ecosystems","authors":"Hiroko Kato Solvang, Shinpei Imori, Martin Biuw, Ulf Lindstrøm, Tore Haug","doi":"10.1002/env.2867","DOIUrl":"10.1002/env.2867","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Understanding and predicting interactions between predators and prey and their environment are fundamental for understanding food web structure, dynamics, and ecosystem function in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Thus, estimating the conditional associations between species and their environments is important for exploring connections or cooperative links in the ecosystem, which in turn can help to clarify such directional relationships. For this purpose, a relevant and practical statistical method is required to link presence/absence observations with biomass, abundance, and physical quantities obtained as continuous real values. These data are sometimes sparse in oceanic space and too short as time series data. To meet this challenge, we provide an approach based on applying categorical data analysis to present/absent observations and real-number data. The real-number data used as explanatory variables for the present/absent response variable are discretized based on the optimal detection of thresholds without any prior biological/ecological information. These discretized data express two different levels, such as large/small or high/low, which give experts a simple interpretation for investigating complicated associations in marine ecosystems. This approach is implemented in the previous statistical method called CATDAP developed by Sakamoto and Akaike in 1979. Our proposed approach consists of a two-step procedure for categorical data analysis: (1) finding the appropriate threshold to discretize the real-number data for applying an independent test; and (2) identifying the best conditional probability model to investigate the possible associations among the data based on a statistical information criterion. We perform a simulation study to validate our proposed approach and investigate whether the method's observation includes many zeros (zero-inflated data), which can often occur in practical situations. Furthermore, the approach is applied to two datasets: (1) one collected during an international synoptic krill survey in the Scotia Sea west of the Antarctic Peninsula to investigate associations among krill, fin whale (<i>Balaenoptera physalus</i>), surface temperature, depth, slope in depth (flatter or steeper terrain), and temperature gradient (slope in temperature); (2) the other collected by ecosystem surveys conducted during August–September in 2014–2017 to investigate associations among common minke whales, the predatory fish Atlantic cod, and their main prey groups (zooplankton, 0-group fish) in Arctic Ocean waters to the west and north of Svalbard, Norway. The R code summarizing our proposed numerical procedure is presented in S4S1.</p>","PeriodicalId":50512,"journal":{"name":"Environmetrics","volume":"35 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/env.2867","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141501054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EnvironmetricsPub Date : 2024-06-28DOI: 10.1002/env.2874
Marnie I. Low, Adrian W. Bowman, Wayne Jones, Matthijs Bonte
{"title":"Exact optimisation of spatiotemporal monitoring networks by p-splines with applications in groundwater assessment","authors":"Marnie I. Low, Adrian W. Bowman, Wayne Jones, Matthijs Bonte","doi":"10.1002/env.2874","DOIUrl":"10.1002/env.2874","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper develops methods to optimise the sampling strategy for monitoring networks which have fixed locations with regular sampling but with only a proportion of these locations to be used on each sampling occasion. This creates the need for a dynamic spatiotemporal sampling design which makes optimal choices of the locations to be sampled on each occasion. This is a commonly occurring scenario in many environmental settings where there is an existing network of monitoring stations and sampling can be expensive. The particular context of optimisation of an existing groundwater monitoring network is discussed in the paper. The standard design criteria of integrated variance (IV) and variance of the integral (VI) are adapted to the spatiotemporal setting. <span>p</span>-spline models are shown to allow exact computation of IV and VI, in the case of the additive errors, and a very good approximation of IV in the case of multiplicative errors. The speed of these exact computations allows the globally optimal sampling design to be identified efficiently. In the standard case of additive errors, the design criteria are able to exploit information across time. The only information needed is the location of sampling points, not the values sampled. This contrasts with the case of multiplicative errors where the design criteria are also influenced by the observed response data. Simulated and real examples are used to illustrate the results throughout.</p>","PeriodicalId":50512,"journal":{"name":"Environmetrics","volume":"35 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/env.2874","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141501055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EnvironmetricsPub Date : 2024-06-25DOI: 10.1002/env.2875
Roberto Ambrosini, Federica Baccini, Lucio Barabesi
{"title":"Similarity network aggregation for the analysis of glacier ecosystems","authors":"Roberto Ambrosini, Federica Baccini, Lucio Barabesi","doi":"10.1002/env.2875","DOIUrl":"10.1002/env.2875","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The synthesis of information deriving from complex networks is a topic receiving increasing relevance in ecology and environmental sciences. In particular, the aggregation of multilayer networks, that is, network structures formed by multiple interacting networks (the layers), constitutes a fast-growing field. In several environmental applications, the layers of a multilayer network are modeled as a collection of similarity matrices describing how similar pairs of biological entities are, based on different types of features (e.g., biological traits). The present paper first discusses two main techniques for combining the multi-layered information into a single network (the so-called monoplex), that is, similarity network fusion and similarity matrix average (SMA). Then, the effectiveness of the two methods is tested on a real-world dataset of the relative abundance of microbial species in the ecosystems of nine glaciers (four glaciers in the Alps and five in the Andes). A preliminary clustering analysis on the monoplexes obtained with different methods shows the emergence of a tightly connected community formed by species that are typical of cryoconite holes worldwide. Moreover, the weights assigned to different layers by the SMA algorithm suggest that two large South American glaciers (Exploradores and Perito Moreno) are structurally different from the smaller glaciers in both Europe and South America. Overall, these results highlight the importance of integration methods in the discovery of the underlying organizational structure of biological entities in multilayer ecological networks.</p>","PeriodicalId":50512,"journal":{"name":"Environmetrics","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141501056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EnvironmetricsPub Date : 2024-06-21DOI: 10.1002/env.2868
Sihan Chen, Sameh Abdulah, Ying Sun, Marc G. Genton
{"title":"On the impact of spatial covariance matrix ordering on tile low-rank estimation of Matérn parameters","authors":"Sihan Chen, Sameh Abdulah, Ying Sun, Marc G. Genton","doi":"10.1002/env.2868","DOIUrl":"10.1002/env.2868","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Spatial statistical modeling involves processing an <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>n</mi>\u0000 <mo>×</mo>\u0000 <mi>n</mi>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation>$$ ntimes n $$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> symmetric positive definite covariance matrix, where <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>n</mi>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation>$$ n $$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> denotes the number of locations. However, when <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>n</mi>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation>$$ n $$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> is large, processing this covariance matrix using traditional methods becomes prohibitive. Thus, coupling parallel processing with approximation can be an elegant solution by relying on parallel solvers that deal with the matrix as a set of small tiles instead of the full structure. The approximation can also be performed at the tile level for better compression and faster execution. The tile low-rank (TLR) approximation has recently been used to compress the covariance matrix, which mainly relies on ordering the matrix elements, which can impact the compression quality and the efficiency of the underlying solvers. This work investigates the accuracy and performance of location-based ordering algorithms. We highlight the pros and cons of each ordering algorithm and give practitioners hints on carefully choosing the ordering algorithm for TLR approximation. We assess the quality of the compression and the accuracy of the statistical parameter estimates of the Matérn covariance function using TLR approximation under various ordering algorithms and settings of correlations through simulations on irregular grids. Our conclusions are supported by an application to daily soil moisture data in the Mississippi Basin area.</p>","PeriodicalId":50512,"journal":{"name":"Environmetrics","volume":"35 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/env.2868","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141515685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}