Dr. Daniel Taylor-Rodriguez Research: Oregon Connectivity Assessment and Mapping Project
The Oregon Connectivity Assessment and Mapping Project (OCAMP) is a multi-year effort to analyze and map the movement patterns and habitat preferences of up to 60 species in Oregon with the goal of accurately assessing and prioritizing wildlife corridors in the state. It is a collaboration between the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, several state and federal transportation and land management departments, conservation nonprofits, and Portland State University. Statistics professor Daniel Taylor-Rodriguez, along with environmental science professsor Cat de Rivera and geography professor Martin Lafrenze, received a joint grant from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to participate in the mapping project.
Dr. Daniel Taylor-Rodriguez is developing methods to determine if species connectivity maps built using solely species-specific expert knowledge, agree with observed species movement and presence data. The validation of these maps is a key step in OCAMP since these remain a hypothetical construct until validated against observed species data. This is an exciting and challenging problem given that observed species data comes from multiple sources (citizen science, state and federal agencies, private entities, etc), most frequently only locations where the species was observed are recorded and the sampling design (if any at all) is commonly unknown. Furthermore, biological surveys overrepresent locations that are either convenient, or where the species is known to inhabit. As such the species data available may be conceptualized as a biased and partially observed realization from a point process, thus inference has to be performed adapting point process modeling to account for these limitations.
Under the guidance of Dr. Taylor-Rodriguez, PhD in Mathematical Sciences student Jacob Schultz contributed to the project by writing and running code as well as participating in methodological development and discussions with project's core team.
Further details about the research project are on the Oregon Conservation Strategy website.