Annual Report for the - Department of Statistics - University of ...

Final Report
National Research Center
for Statistics and the Environment Final Report 1 1. Summary 4 2. Outreach activities 4
2.1 Seminars 4
2.2 Web site 5
2.3 Workshops 5
Initial EPA-NRCSE workshop 6
Cascadia Tropospheric Ozone Peer Review Workshop 6
Combining Information From Programs That Monitor Ecological And Natural
Resources 6
Environmental Monitoring Surveys Over Time 7
7th International Meeting on Statistical Climatology 7
EPA Corvallis 8
Particulate matter air pollution 8
Quality assurance of environmental models 9
EPA Las Vegas 10
Slovakia workshop 10
Large Data Sets 11
Mini-workshops 11
Collaborative working group 12
EPA site visit 12
Spatial moving averages 12
NSF/CBMS Regional Conference on Environmental Statistics 12
2.4 Conference presentations 13
2.5 Professional service and recognition 13
2.6 Outreach 16 3. Research activities 17
3.1 Ecological and environmental impact 17
Biological monitoring 17
Hydrologic effect of land use change 18
Statistical analysis of surface ozone 19
A review of statistical adjustment of ozone for meteorological variables
19
A linked toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic model of methylmercury-induced
developmental neurotoxicity in the fetal rat 20
Analysis of CO data in Spokane 21
Remote sensing and automobile emissions 21
Global warming and Pacific Northwest snowpack 21
Ecological Assessment of Riverine Systems by Combining Information from
Multiple Sources 22
Modeling multiple pollutants at multiple sites, with application to
acute respiratory studies 23
Is there a contradiction between apparent long-term increases in the
frequency of extreme precipitation over the coterminous U.S. and the
absence of flood trends? 23
3.2 Education and outreach 24
Center Computing 24
A Bayesian tutorial 24
Statistics courses for EPA Region X 25
Quantitative Literacy Project 25
Scientific method curriculum: The Truth about Science 25
3.3 Model assessment 26
Operational evaluation of air quality models 26
Stochastic precipitation model 26
Assessment of environmental fate and transport models 28
Assessment of toxicodynamic models 29
Developing methodology for assessment of medium and large scale
environmental models 30
Model assessment using repeated model fitting 31
Integrated exposure and uptake biokinetic lead model (IEUBK) 32
3.4 Space-time models 33
Imputing air pollution exposure over space and time for use in analyses
of health effects 33
Use of personal monitors to assess health effects of particulate matter
exposure in Slovakia 33
Modeling time series of multiply censored data 34
Bayesian estimation of nonstationary spatial covariance structure 35
Development of an anisotropic global covariance function 36
Trend estimation using wavelets 37
Receptor modeling for air quality data in space and/or time 37
3.5 Sampling and design 38
Composite sampling 38
Comparison of ranked set sampling to alternative sampling designs and
investigation of its usefulness in environmental monitoring 39
Monitoring network design 40
3.6 Standards and Regulatory Impact 41
Statistical aspects of setting and implementing environmental standards
41
Environmental health regulation of particulate matter: Application of
the theory of irreversible investments 42
Agricultural modeling for watershed management 42
Decision-making under uncertainty: Prioritizing freshwater habitat
restoration for salmon recovery in the Columbia river basin 43
3.7 Methodology 43
A comparison of SVD and CCA analyses in climate prediction 43
ORCA: A visualization toolkit for high-dimensional data 44
Semiparametric trend estimation and model selection 44
Evaluating the Benefits of an Ecological Study 45
Applications of Bartolucci's theorem 45
Fast and exact simulation of fractional Brownian motion 45
Temporal fallacies in biomarker based exposure inference 45
3.8 List of internally funded projects 47
3.8 Visitors 53
3.10 Students 61
3.11 Research products 64
Books 64
Papers 64 4. Administration 75
4.1 Director and Associate Director 75
4.2 Executive and advisory committees 76
4.2.1 Executive committee 76
4.2.2 Advisory committee 76
4.3 Space 76
4.4 Hiring 77
4.5 Members 77
4.6 Relations to other statistical research groups 78
NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) 78
NISS (National Institute for Statistical Sciences) 79
IMPACT 79
Other research groups 79
List of subcontracts 80 Appendix A. Seminars 80 Appendix B. Technical reports 90
1997-98 90
1998-99 91
1999-2000 93
2000-01 95
2001-02 97 Appendix C. Conference presentations 98 Appendix D. Workshop agendas 109
ORD-NRCSE Environmental Statistics Workshop 109
Cascadia Tropospheric Ozone Peer Review Meeting 112
Environmental Monitoring Surveys Over Time 113
7th International Meeting on Statistical Climatology 118
NRCSE/EPA workshop at Corvallis EPA 133
Particulate Methodology Workshop 133
Quality Assurance of Environmental Models 135
EPA Las Vegas 137
Exposure assessment in environmental and occupational health 138
Large Data Sets 139
Internal workshop 140
Teaching Environmental Statistics at the UW 142
Course description for EPA Region X Risk Assessment Course 145
Spatial moving averages 147
NSF-CBMS Regional Conference on Environmental Statistics 148 1. Summary In 1996 the US EPA awarded a five-year cooperative agreement with the
University of Washington to create a national center for environmental
statistical research. On September 10, 2001, the National Research Center
for Statistics and the Environment was notified that its funding would not
be renewed. A one-year no-cost extension was allowed, and on September 30,
2002, the EPA funding of the Center ended. This report describes the
scientific results of the $5,380,207 awarded to the University. The Center
has organized or co-organized 14 workshops and two conferences. The 33
Center members, 3 postdoctoral researchers, and 29 graduate students have
made 164 presentations at national and international scientific meetings,
published 6 books, and 138 scientific papers. In all, 229 visitors spent
time at NRCSE or NRCSE-organized events at the University of Washington
campus. 44 different research projects were pursued at the Center, and 7
outside subcontracts were awarded. 11 doctoral degrees and 9 Master's
degrees have been earned by NRCSE-funded graduate students. 2. Outreach activities
2.1 Seminars The first activite of the newly formed Center was to organize a seminar
series with speakers including local consultants, EPA Region X and
Washington Department of Ecology staff, Center members and visiting
faculty. The seminar series was organized as an official University course,
and had about half a dozen registered students. An informal summer seminar
series featured mainly Center visitors. Attendance during the first year
varied from 20 to 60, with an average attendance of about 40 in Autumn
quarter, 35 in Winter quarter, and 30 in Spring quarter .The second year
most seminars had 20-30 attending. During the second year, we added the service of maintaining streaming video
and speaker slides on the web The service requires a special plugin which
is available for free download at the web site. The most popular seminars
were those of Chris Glasbey, Statistics Scotland, on image warping (40
requests outside the washington.edu domain) and of Joel Reynolds, NRCSE, on
Pareto optimal model assessment (32 requests). While it is not generally
possible to resolve where each visit originates, out of resolvable
addresses 1/3 came from .edu (mainly US educational institutions), slightly
fewer from the commercial .com and .net domains, while about a quarter came
from European Union sites and 8% from .gov (US government sites). In 1997-98, a committee was formed to study the seminar organization and
structure. The main recommendations were
to have faculty members organize the seminars with about half the seminars
each quarter falling into a coherent theme
to develop a Center newsletter
to use seminars as a focal point for Center communication and interaction The seminar series during the academic year 1998-99 had a quarterly theme.
In Autumn 98 the theme was particulate matter air pollution, while in
Winter the theme was assessment of environmental and ecological models. The
Spring quarter seminar series focused on student and post-doctoral
researchers presenting their current work, and was carried out jointly with
the graduate program on Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management.
During Autumn and Winter all seminars were videotaped and made available on
the web. Since the University has several weekly statistical seminar series, there
had been relatively sparse attendance at NRCSE seminar. A decision was made
to limit the NRCSE seminars to three per quarter, and make them joint with
other groups.. In addition to the seminars, the Center organized afternoon
workshops to cover in more depth areas of interest to Center members. These
workshops started in Winter quarter 2000. A list of all seminars is in
Appendix A. 2.2 Web site The Center site at the World-Wide Web (http://www.nrcse.washington.edu/) is
a key part of its informational outreach. Much care went into designing
the web site to have a consistent look between pages, and be easy to
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