I like to think broadly about Ecology, and thus I am trying to
reinvent the undergraduate pedagogy of general ecology (a book with
Oxford Univ. Press is
slowly taking shape). I am also an R
geek, and I rely on R, JAGS, Latex, and Sweave (links)
for literate programming and data analysis.
Reinventing (General) Ecology
Following Banavar et al. (2012, 2007), Ginzburg and
Damuth (2010), Scheiner and
Willig (2008, 2011), Scheiner (2012), Loreau (2010, Princeton
Monograph Series), Nowak (2006, Page and Nowak 2002), Ginzburg and
Arditi (2012), I am in the hunt for an underlying framework of ecology
and evolutionary biology. A book from Oxford University Press is in the works.
Primer of Ecology with R (Springer, 2009)
This book and accompanying R package ('primer')
package provide a simple
introduction to theoretical/mathematical ecology
(e.g., Gotelli 2008, Roughgarden 1998) that also provides an
introduction to R, the Open
Source language for statistical and dynamical modeling (http://www.r-project.org/). It is
part of Springer Publishers' "use R" series for the natural and
social sciences. The R package primer')
is available at the R repositories (CRAN sites). There is also a web site for errata.
R package development for vegetation monitoring at the Shenandoah
National Park (USNPS)
Vegetation data is notoriously nasty, with lots of rare species, lots
of zeroes, and relative poor sample coverage for anything at the
species level. I am developing an R package to simplify advanced
methods to estimate and display important features of
vegetation. Advanced methods include Bayesian approaches for static
patterns and trends over time.