Here are the independent projects from students who took the class in prior years.

Presentation topics

Here are the topics of the students’ final projects from years past.

2023

  • “Puget Sound river nutrients through time– Detecting decades of water quality change using dynamic factor analysis”
  • “Modeling forty years of dissolved oxygen in the Middle Green River: Examining trends from 1980 to 2022”
  • “Modeling mountain lion movement and space use with multivariate autoregressive models”
  • “Hidden Markov model identifies critical changepoint in the pre-bloom dynamics of an algal bloom microbiome”
  • “Searching for causal mechanisms relating to the decline in repeat spawning rates of steelhead using time series of data for Olympic Peninsula steelhead”
  • “Quantifying long term trends of pinniped species across multiple spatial scales”
  • “Divided or united? Delving into Bering Sea Tanner crab (Chionoecetes bairdi) management districts”
  • “An Applied Time Series Model of an Ocean Microbiome Response to an Algal Bloom Ecosystem Disturbance”
  • “Applying Hidden Markov Models to timeseries of seabird densities”

2021

  • “Heat-Related Mortality in the Greater Seattle Area (1980 - 2018)”
  • “Modeling spatio-temporal dynamics of mountain pine beetle activity in the Southern Rockies”
  • “Quantifying the success of invasive green sunfish eradication from McGee Wash, Arizona”
  • “Recovery of the California brown pelican following DDT contamination in the Southern California Bight”
  • “Mobile technologies reveal human activity across urban lakes”
  • “Population viability analysis of marbled murrelets reveal long-term decline in the Salish Sea”
  • “Using removal data to estimate rusty crayfish population growth and spread in the John Day River”
  • “Synchronous dynamics in marine fishes in the Southern California Bight”

2019

  • “A century of stable isotope data demonstrates robust trophic ecology and ecosystem productivity from archival bone of a generalist predator”
  • “Estimating common trends in bull trout life history strategies”
  • “Assessing spatial covariance among time series of river discharge across western North America”
  • “Timing and abundance of juvenile spring Chinook emigrants from the Chiwawa River”
  • “Cetacean Strandings in the Pacific Northwest”

2017

  • “Trends and shortcomings in midwinter waterfowl surveys along the Pacific Flyway: a multivariate state-space modeling approach”
  • “Cyclic dominance of alternative male phenotypes in an introduced sockeye salmon population”
  • “An application of arima model to study the association between particulate matters and hospital admission for respiratory disease”
  • “Time resolved exposures of mice to cadmium: hair as a biomarker of exposure”
  • “Characterizing temporal variability in pelagic communities for biological monitoring at marine renewable energy sites”
  • “Lake size and watershed characteristics mediate the effect of climate on lake water levels in the Puget Sound Lowlands”
  • “Determining multi-scale controls on river temperature: a time series approach”

2015

  • “Modeling domoic acid in Pacific razor clams (Siliqua patula) at Long Beach, WA, USA using autoregressive integrated moving average and generalized linear models”
  • “Synthesis of Bristol Bay sockeye salmon genetic data improves understanding of migration patterns to inform commercial fisheries management”
  • “Behavior of depth selection in lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) morphotypes in northern Lake Superior”
  • “Extracting time-varying climate-driven growth index for use in stock assessment models”
  • “A comparison of statistical models applicable for environmental assessments of marine renewable energy sites”
  • “A method of reconstructing the daily growth of large wildfires with state space models”
  • “Modeling and forecasting multispecies catches in the Uruguayan longline fishery”
  • “Chinook salmon jack rate in the Columbia River basin: are jacks trending?”
  • “Spatial asynchrony in juvenile sockeye salmon growth driven by competition in a changing climate”

2013

  • “Can distinct sub-populations within the Prince William Sound be classified by differing responses in male fecundity and do oceanographic conditions affect surveys of male fecundity?”
  • “Scales of variability in forage fish stocks”
  • “Extreme weather incidents and prey availability affect Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) reproductive success”
  • “Environment drives changes in recruitment for most marine fisheries”
  • “Initial exploration of modeling options for an environmental driver of sardine abundance”
  • “Demographic structure of Puget Sound Pacific herring stocks”
  • “Common trends in spawning stock biomass of northeast pacific marine stocks”
  • “Describing variability of fish and macrozooplankton density at marine hydrokinetic energy sites”
  • “Lake specific variation in juvenile sockeye salmon growth driven by competition in a changing climate”
  • “Environmental and phenological variability: match-mismatch effects of lake conditions and entry timing on sockeye salmon survival and growth”

Publications

Siple, M. C. and Francis, T. B. 2016. Population diversity in Pacific herring of Puget Sound, USA. Oecologia 180: 111-125.Link to article

Linder, H.L., Horne, J.K. and E.J. Ward. 2017. Modeling baseline conditions of ecological indicators: Marine renewable energy environmental monitoring, Ecological Indicators, Volume 83: 178-191 Link to article

Gonzalez, S., Horne, J. K., and Ward, E.J. 2019. Does temporal variability limit standardized biological monitoring at wave and tidal energy sites?. International Marine Energy Journal, 2(1 (Nov), 15–28. Link to article

Smits, A.P., Ruffing, C.M., Royer, T.V., Appling, A.P., Griffiths, N.A., Bellmore, R., et al. 2019. Detecting signals of large-scale climate phenomena in discharge and nutrient loads in the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River basin. Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 3791–3801. Link to article

Arnold, L., Scheuerell , M.D., Busch Isaksen 2022. T. Mortality Associated with Extreme Heat in Washington State: The Historical and Projected Public Health Burden. Atmosphere, 13, 1392. Link to article

Elmstrom, E.J., Holtgrieve, G.W., Scheuerell, M.D., Schauer, A.J., and K. Leazer. 2024. Climate and landform interact to control the source and transport of nitrate in Pacific Northwest rivers. Commun Earth Environ 5, 90. Link to article

Rand, Z.R., Ward, E.J., Zamon, J.E., Good, T.P., and Harvey, C.J. 2024. Using Hidden Markov Models to develop ecosystem indicators from non-stationary time series. Ecological Modelling, Volume 495. Link to article