Environmental Modeling

Coordinator: Alan D. Ziegler, Associate Professor, Geography

Project Description and Scope

Environmental modeling is an important diagnostic tool for understanding the natural world. Modeling allows scientists to better understand natural systems and to make predictions on the future state of those systems. Examples include flood predictions, weather forecasting, and predicting the effects of climate change. Unfortunately, environmental modeling is not a topic readily accessible to students and researchers as it requires knowledge of environmental science and computer programming - two disparate fields. Even when the knowledge exists, often the computing power is not present, as the computational demands of the programming and the large amounts of data analysis can take weeks to run on a normal computer.

The goal of this reading group is to help make the process of learning and doing environmental modeling easier by bringing together those who have interests and those who have some expertise in modeling to read, discuss, and help each other on projects involving environmental modeling. In addition to providing literature, this reading group will provide a powerful workstation for participants to utilize in their computationally strenuous modeling tasks. Group members will read books on the theory of environmental modeling as well as literature on different techniques and programming languages used by modelers. In addition to reading and discussing modeling theory and methodology, group members will be able to do modeling of their own and present their results to the group.

Initial Reading List

  • Environmental Modeling: A Practical Introduction by Barnsley
  • Applied Geostatistics by Isaaks & Srivastava
  • Ecological Models and Data in R by Bolker
  • Signal Theory Methods in Multispectral Remote Sensing by Landgrebe
  • Applied Geostatistics with SGeMS: A User’s Guide by Remy, Boucher & Wu
  • Environmental Modeling: Finding Simplicity in Complexity by Wainwright & Mulligan

Meeting Schedule and Events

Venue: Geography Meeting Room
Time: 900-1100
Frequency: Twice a month (Wednesdays am when no classes are scheduled)

List of Participants

  • A/P Alan Ziegler / Geography
  • A/P Matthias Rosh / Geography
  • Dr. Lim Han She / Geography
  • Dr. Daniel Friess / Biological Sciences
  • Dr. Vladan Bobavic / SDWA

    • Graduate students:
  • Nicholas Jachowski / Geography
  • Shamraz Anver / ARI
  • Wisa Wisesjindawat Fink / Geography
  • Ran Li Shan / Geography
  • Swe Hlaing Win / Geography

    • Undergraduate students:
  • Michelle Quek / Geography
  • Norman Shah / Geography