Other people using ABMS for spatially explicit ecological modelling

I recently went to a talk by Lael Parrot who was visiting Southampton University for the week. Not a name I had heard of before but I'm quite surprised at this now considering she is involved in very similar work to me!

The most relevant paper I found from her was the one she talked about at the seminar she gave:

Anwar, S.M., Jeanneret, C.A., Parrot, L. & Marceau, D.J. (2007) Conceptualization and implementation of a multi agent model to simulate whale-wathcing tours in the St. Lawrence Estuary in Quebec, Canada. Environmental Modelling and Software 22 1775-1787.

Not only was this paper spatially explicit and employed agent-based modelling, but it was done using the Repast Simphony toolkit!! Finally, an ecological example of someone doing a peer-reviewed and published piece of research using Repast.

I've not yet management to dive into the paper in depth but some of the simulations Lael showed during her talk have me very impressed - linking the repast output with GIS data and creating some pretty good looking 3D models of the system. They also re-integrated the model output with the original GIS data to do some spatial analysis and statistics, so I wonder whether this might also be my best option... definitely something to look into in more detail.

Its a much bigger model than mine will be so I have no doubt that I'll be able to pick up some interesting tips from Lael and the paper. I'll report back with any useful bits of information.

Policy placement with the National Assembly for Wales

So i've been quiet for a while now due to me doing a PhD placement for 3 months with the Research Service of the National Assembly for Wales. I'd definitely recommend doing something similar if given the opportunity and you are thinking about a career outside of academia. This particular placement was quite politics heavy which isn't necessarily what I want to get involved with, but it did give me a tremendous insight into how policy is formed and amended and what goes into devising and publishing national strategy documents.

I was based in the Environment and Sustainability research team meaning I got to be involved with a lot for work currently being undertaken within the Assembly - namely a review of all things Energy in Wales, the publication of the 'Sustaining a Living Wales' Green Paper and the review of merging the three statutory environmental bodies (Countryside Council for Wales, Environment Agency Wales and Forestry Commission Wales) in Wales into a Single Environment Body. Some really interesting topics which meant I got to develop, prepare and publish useful documents on these subjects to the Assembly Members and the general public.

A list of my contributions during the placement:

1. An introduction to natural environment policy in Wales and a comparison with natural environment policies for other parts of the UK (Research paper)
2. Ecosystems and the Ecosystem Approach (Quick Guide)
3. Nature Conservation Designations (Quick Guide)
4. Briefing on Legal Enforcement of European Statutory Legislation (internal briefing to the Environment and Sustainability Committee)
5. Briefing on Tidal Flooding and Coastal Erosion (internal briefing to the Environment and Sustainability Committee)
6. Briefing on Technical Report to Environment Agency Wales on an Investigation into Cockle Mortalities at Burry Inlet (internal briefing to Petitions Committee).