Pattern Recognition for Ecological Science and Environmental
Modeling
This project seeks to develop general-purpose pattern recognition
methods that can be applied to a range of problems in ecological
science and environmental modeling. We plan to test our methods on
three problems:
- Stone Flies for stream water quality
monitoring. Stone flies are a good indicator of the health of
streams. In their larval stage, they live in the mud at the bottom of
the stream. However, routine use of stone flies as a water quality
measure is currently impractical, because there is no low-cost way to
make surveys of the stone fly population. We propose to apply pattern
recognition methods to identify and classify stone flies into Family,
Genus, and perhaps Species.
- Beetles of the forest floor.. There are
hundreds or thousands of species of beetles that live in the forest.
Scientists would like to understand all of the functions performed by
these beetles and their relationships to other organisms in the
forest. Regular monitoring of beetle populations would provide an
important indicator of forest biodiversity and forest health.
It is easy to collect samples of thousands of beetles, but manually
classifying them is very expensive. We propose to apply pattern
recognition methods to identify and classify beetles in the soil and
leaf litter of the forest floor.
- Moldenke
images. Images of soil mesofauna.