Statistical Methods for Trend Detection and Analysis in the Environmental Sciences - Statistics in Practice by Richard Chandler & Marian Scott

About the Book

"Statistical methodology itself has made some significant developments in areas that are highly relevant to the problems faced by environmentalists; thus this book fills a gap in the market in which there is currently a lot of interest. Split into two parts, part 1 - Theory and methods - introduces the basis for and scope of the book, and covers amongst others the chief topics of exploratory analysis, non-parametric estimation and testing, and parametric modeling. Part 2 - Case Studies - introduces a number of co-authors, specialists in their own areas of environmental science, to illustrate the application of the theory and methods in practice. The accompanying website develops the practical aspects raised in the book, and provides a useful complementary tool."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

The need to understand and quantify change is fundamental throughout the environmental sciences. This might involve describing past variation, understanding the mechanisms underlying observed changes, making projections of possible future change, or monitoring the effect of intervening in some environmental system. This book provides an overview of modern statistical techniques that may be relevant in problems of this nature.

Practitioners studying environmental change will be familiar with many classical statistical procedures for the detection and estimation of trends. However, the ever increasing capacity to collect and process vast amounts of environmental information has led to growing awareness that such procedures are limited in the insights that they can deliver. At the same time, significant developments in statistical methodology have often been widely dispersed in the statistical literature and have therefore received limited exposure in the environmental science community. This book aims to provide a thorough but accessible review of these developments. It is split into two parts: the first provides an introduction to this area and the second part presents a collection of case studies illustrating the practical application of modern statistical approaches to the analysis of trends in real studies.

Key Features:

• Presents a thorough introduction to the practical application and methodology of trend analysis in environmental science.
• Explores non-parametric estimation and testing as well as parametric techniques.
• Methods are illustrated using case studies from a variety of environmental application areas.
• Looks at trends in all aspects of a process including mean, percentiles and extremes.
• Supported by an accompanying website featuring datasets and R code.

The book is designed to be accessible to readers with some basic statistical training, but also contains sufficient detail to serve as a reference for practising statisticians. It will therefore be of use to postgraduate students and researchers both in the environmental sciences and in statistics.

From the Back Cover

The need to understand and quantify change is fundamental throughout the environmental sciences. This might involve describing past variation, understanding the mechanisms underlying observed changes, making projections of possible future change, or monitoring the effect of intervening in some environmental system. This book provides an overview of modern statistical techniques that may be relevant in problems of this nature.

Practitioners studying environmental change will be familiar with many classical statistical procedures for the detection and estimation of trends. However, the ever increasing capacity to collect and process vast amounts of environmental information has led to growing awareness that such procedures are limited in the insights that they can deliver. At the same time, significant developments in statistical methodology have often been widely dispersed in the statistical literature and have therefore received limited exposure in the environmental science community. This book aims to provide a thorough but accessible review of these developments. It is split into two parts: the first provides an introduction to this area and the second part presents a collection of case studies illustrating the practical application of modern statistical approaches to the analysis of trends in real studies.

Key Features:

• Presents a thorough introduction to the practical application and methodology of trend analysis in environmental science.
• Explores non-parametric estimation and testing as well as parametric techniques.
• Methods are illustrated using case studies from a variety of environmental application areas.
• Looks at trends in all aspects of a process including mean, percentiles and extremes.
• Supported by an accompanying website featuring datasets and R code.

The book is designed to be accessible to readers with some basic statistical training, but also contains sufficient detail to serve as a reference for practising statisticians. It will therefore be of use to postgraduate students and researchers both in the environmental sciences and in statistics.

Review Quotes

"The book is well written and I strongly recommend the book to the users. I have no doubt that many applied statisticians will benefit by the wide coverage of topics in the book." (Journal of Time Series Analysis, 9 May 2011)

About the Author

Richard E Chandler, Lecturer in Statistical Science, Department of Statistical Science, University College London
Researcher in the area of stochastic processes and time series, with specific applications in hydrology and climate modeling. Work previously published by Wiley in the Encyclopaedia of Biostatistics.

E. Marian Scott, Professor of Environmental Statistics, Department of Statistics, University of Glasgow
Marian Scott is the editor of the Earth & Environmental Sciences section of Statistics in Practice for Wiley. She has 49 published articles. Her reputation within the community is evidenced by her associate editorship for 2 external journals (Radiocarbon and the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity); she is also honorary secretary for the Royal Statistical Society's Environmental Statistics Study Group.