TIES2023: Breaking Down Barriers between Statistics and Environmental Science Trent University Peterborough, Canada, July 24-29, 2023

The broad theme of the conference is Observation meets Theory: Breaking Down Barriers between Statistics and Environmental Science. The co-sponsorship of the meeting by Trent's School of the Environment and Canadian Environmental Modelling Centre is intended to bring environmental scientists to the joint meeting, and to hopefully foster collaborations and help both sides of the science see the challenges and successes of the other.

The conference program will be a mixture of plenary talks, papers, and poster sessions, coupled with opportunities for conversation in person and online. In addition, several useful workshops are planned at optional times for those who would like to attend, including several training-oriented such workshops aimed at graduate students.

Submission Guidelines

All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. The following paper categories are welcome:

Environmetrics is the application and study of statistics centered on the environment. Recent growth in data science has reinforced that the key skills of data science are integral to reproducible, replicable workflows in the scientific work already being done by researchers and practitioners in environmetrics. This year's theme is Observation to Theory: Breaking Down Barriers between Statistics and Environmental Science, and the co-sponsorship of this meeting by the Canadian Environmental Modeling Centre and the Trent School of the Environment is hoped to bring a broad cross-section of environmental modelers to the meeting who would normally not have considered it as a destination. We hope the meeting of minds between statisticians, environmental data scientists, environmental scientists, and environmental modelers will be very fruitful, and spark numerous collaborations in the future. Within the overall theme we will focus on the following topics:

• Topic 1: Climate, climate change, and climate systems - Climate change is an ever-present topic at our meetings. In addition, a broad cross-section of environmental science is interested in problems connecting to climate systems and climate change.
• Topic 2: Integrative data analysis - Integrative data analysis is the pooling of two or more independent data sets for analysis. Ecological and environmental data are often recorded at wildly differing temporal and spatial scales, and the tools and methods for working with these data types are complex and multifaceted. We hope to see talks in this topic from both the side of the environmental data gatherers, and from the environmental data modelers.
• Topic 3: Spatial and spatio-temporal modeling, statistics, and data governance - Spatial data, spatio-temporal data, and the mathematical and statistical models that deal with their complexities. Also issues of data governance at large scales, to deal with the massive data sets that can result.
• Topic 4: Ecological modeling - Ecological data and modeling, from surface to sea depths. Models for animal population movement, fisheries stocks, and other connected areas. Ecological transport models and habitat.
• Topic 5: Air Pollution Measuring, Monitoring, Modeling and Impacts - Air pollution in its multitudinous forms, from particulate matter to carbon dioxide. Connections with remote sensing, and integrative data analysis. Questions of policy, from monitoring to impact measurement, including epidemiological applications.
• Topic 6: Environmental data science - Tool building, software development, workflow, processes for building, analyzing and integrating data. Hopeful connections to the recent pair of Special Issues on Environmental Data Science in Environmetrics.

Committees

Program Committee

• Nathaniel Newlands (Chair) - Agriculture and Agrifood Canada, Canada
• Wesley Burr (Co-Chair) - Trent University, Canada
• Edward Boone (Chair, Awards Committee) - Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
• Yulia Gel (President, TIES) - University of Texas, USA
• Claire Miller (President-Elect, TIES) - University of Glasgow
• Elena N. Naumova - Tufts University, USA
• Zhengyuan Zhu - Iowa State University, USA
• Abdel El Shaarawi - Cairo University, Egypt
• Sylvia Esterby - UBC Okanagan, Canada
• John Sulik - University of Guelph

Organizing committee

• Wesley Burr (Chair) - Trent University
• Julian Aherne - Trent University
• Mark Parnis - Trent University
• Shaun Watmough - Trent University
• Cheryl McKenna-Neuman - Trent University
• Raul Ponce-Hernandez - Trent University

Venue

The International Environmetrics Society (TIES), the Canadian Environmental Modelling Centre, and the Trent School of the Environment are co-organizing the 2023 TIES Regional Meeting, which will take place from 24 July to 29 July, 2023, just after the 64th World Statistics Congress (WSC64, 16-20 July in Ottawa, Canada); just after the 6th Spatial Statistics Conference (18-21 July in Boulder, Colorado) and one week before the 2023 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM2023), 5-10 Aug in Toronto, Canada. The conference will be offered in a hybrid format to welcome both online delegates and those participating in-person in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada (90 minutes from Toronto and 2.5 hours from Ottawa by car) on the Trent University campus, located on the beautiful Otonabee River and centered in 1400 acres of the environmentally protected Trent Symons Campus Lands. Previous TIES Regional Meetings have brought 80-120 researchers from around the world and the host country to share their expertise, and experiences in statistics for, and of, the environment.

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to ties.meeting.2023@gmail.com.

Sponsors

The International Environmetrics Society (TIES) is a non-profit organization aimed to foster the development and use of statistical and other quantitative methods in the environmental sciences, environmental engineering and environmental monitoring and protection. To this end, the Society promotes the participation of statisticians, mathematicians, scientists and engineers in the solution of environmental problems and emphasizes the need for collaboration and for clear communication between individuals from different disciplines and between researchers and practitioners. The Society further promotes these objectives by conducting meetings and producing publications, and by encouraging a broad membership of statisticians, mathematicians, engineers, scientists and others interested in furthering the role of statistical and mathematical techniques in service to the environment. TIES meetings are lively, informal gatherings that draw together many modelers interested in environmental problems. 

In 2008, TIES became one of the sections (now known as associations) of the International Statistical Institute (ISI). The ISI is holding their 64th World Statistics Congress (WSC64) in Ottawa, July 16-20 2023, in the week before this TIES regional meeting. 

The Canadian Environmental Modeling Centre (CEMC) is a consortium of researchers at Trent University who use and/or develop models for application in the environment. The Centre has been active for over two decades and encompasses research in a wide variety of environmental applications. The Centre fosters collaboration between modelers and experimentalists, facilitating interaction at the research planning level to help shape better experimental approaches and modelling outcomes. The Centre's breadth encompasses all types of model that relate to environmental issues.

The Trent School of the Environment (TSE) is a leader in Canada for environmental research and innovation, with unparalleled career and hands-on learning opportunities, world-class laboratories, and premiere campus nature areas. Numerous and varied degree options are taught by renowned faculty, renewable energy, biodiversity and food security.