98th ESA Annual Meeting (August 4 -- 9, 2013)

August 03 - 09, 2013

WK 47

Combining Field Measurements and Ecosystem Models

This workshop introduces tools to support tighter integration of observational and experimental data with process based ecological models to promote the meeting's theme “Learning From the Past and Shaping the Future”. Model-data synthesis provides the opportunity to test working hypotheses and reduce uncertainty in ecological inference and predictions. The goal of our workshop is be to expose participants to the Predictive Ecosystem Analyzer (PEcAn), a suite of tools that facilitates data synthesis and model analysis while reducing the technical challenges of running models and managing data. Participants will gain hands-on experience using the PEcAn’s web interface to a) summarize previously published data using meta-analysis, b) use data to parameterize ecosystem models, c) make ecological predictions that account for parameter uncertainty, d) identify data needs to reduce uncertainty, and e) integrate newly collected data into subsequent analyses (go to a). In addition to a technical overview and an opportunity to use PEcAn, this workshop will also introduce the suite of R packages that enable development of advanced functionality.