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American Statistical Association (ASA)
Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR)

Last Modified: 2000-Sep-03
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AmStat Section News, August/September 2000
Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR)

News from Statistics and the Environment
Linda Young, ENVR Chair-Elect

Each year the Statistics and the Environment Section conducts a student papercompetition. This year's entries were strong. Deepak K Agarwal submitted thewinning paper, "Investigating Tropical Deforestation Using Two-stage SpatiallyMisaligned Regression Models." In his paper, written jointly with Alan E.Gelfand and John A. Silander, Jr., Deepak Agarwal developed a hierarchicalBayesian model to investigate the effect of population density on tropicaldeforestation in Madagascar. As winner, Deepak Agarwal, a Ph.D. student withinthe University of Connecticut's Department of Statistics, received a $100 prizeand an additional $100 to cover a portion of the travel expense to the JSM inIndianapolis. In addition, the National Research Center for Statistics and theEnvironment (NRCSE) based at the University of Washington funded the remainingtravel costs.

The paper "Asymptotic Inference for Spatial CDF Over Time" was named honorablemention. Jun Zhu, a Ph.D. student at Iowa State University, submitted thisjoint work with S.M. Lahiri and Noel Cressie. Here the statistical methodologywas developed to analyze changes in a spatial cumulative distribution functionover time.

Three new Section officers were elected this year. Eric P. Smith of theVirginia Polytechnic Institute will begin a three-year commitment aschair-elect, chair, and past-chair in 2001. As 2001 program chair-elect, JayM.Verhoef, University of Alaska, will begin developing the Section'scontribution to the 2002 JSM to be held in New York City. Marcia Gumpertz, NorthCarolina State University, will serve as the 2001 treasurer and 2002 secretaryfor the Section.

Of course, as the new officers begin their service, other officers will beending their tenure. Loveday Conquest, University of Washington, is completingher three year term as chair-elect, chair, and past-chair. She has providedwonderful leadership for the Section. Katherine B. Ensor, Rice University,worked diligently for strong sessions at this year's JSM. Katherine Campbell,Los Alamos National Laboratories, carefully fulfilled her responsibilities astreasurer and then secretary. We, as a Section, thank these for their dedicatedservice to the Section.

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