[Forum SIS] Seminar of Dr. Luigi Spezia

[Claudio Agostinelli]

Apologies for cross-posting

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DIPARTIMENTO DI SCIENZE AMBIENTALI, INFORMATICA E STATISTICA
Universita' Ca' Foscari
VENEZIA
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Seminar

Dr. Luigi Spezia
Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland, Aberdeen, UK

*MODELLING THE STATES OF SCOTLAND'S RIVERS*

January 10th, 2012 at 14.00
Aula B, Santa Marta, Venezia

Anyone interested is invited to participate

Abstract:
Analyses of Scotland's rivers are presented both on a local and on a
global scale, under the environmental and the ecological point of view.
First, the multivariate time series of nitrogen concentrations are
considered by modelling rivers in isolation, then modelling all data
simultaneously. Next, the dynamics of the signatures of two stream
isotopes is investigated. Finally, the mapping of the species
distribution of freshwater pearl mussels in a river is shown. The
analyses are performed by means of Bayesian hierarchical models, driven
by a hidden Markov chain. The states of the Markov process allows
gathering of the observations in a small set of homogeneous groups. The
models shown belong to the class of hidden Markov models and Markov
switching autoregressive models.

The talk is based on joint work with Christian Birkel (University of
Aberdeen), Mark Brewer (Biomathematics&  Statistics Scotland, Aberdeen),
Susan Cooksley (The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen), Martyn Futter
(Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala), Roberta Paroli
(Catholic University, Milan).