American Statistical Association (ASA) Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR) Last Modified: 2001-Feb-17 Send comments, corrections, additions to: ENVR Web Editor or ENVR Webmaster

Nearly at the end of a truly enjoyable year as the chair of this section,I held the last executive board meeting on December 18, 2000. Now I get towrite about it! Maybe Bill Clinton is feeling similarly. Although, Ibelieve his musings will garner more rewards. Actually, those are justmonetary rewards. For any officer, to have the privilege of serving thisdynamic section, is quite a reward in and of itself. I hope this is amotivator for future officers of the section.

John Bailer, Marcia Gumpertz, Jay VerHoef, Loveday Conquest, Linda Young,and Jean Opsomer participated in the December meeting. We reviewed theyear and regarded the Noel Cressie workshop on Hierarchical Modeling as thehighlight of the year. Not only was this workshop well received for itscontent, it proved to be a financial success. (Although Jean Opsomer'streasurer's report noted that the end-of-September ASA Balance Sheet didnot yet include the funds due the section for this effort.) This led to adiscussion of the absence of short courses in conjunction with the JSM inIndianapolis last August. While these are not necessarily money-makers,they are important to ensure the continuance of specialized environmentalstatistics training.

The committee reiterated that the funding for the Student Paper Award andTravel Fellowship would once again be supplemented by the National ResearchCenter for Statistics and the Environment at the University of Washington.However 2001 would be the last year of this supplemental money and weshould start thinking of other avenues to fund, or partially fund, theaward. And, on the topic of recognition, Loveday Conquest reported onbehalf of the committee that recommends ENVR members for ASA Fellowship.She noted that there was a relatively high percentage of members who hadattained Fellowship status, but that nevertheless highly qualifiedcandidates would be recommended by the section. She also suggested thatthis committee have a term that begins in April and ends the followingMarch in order to coincide with the schedule for fellowship nominations.This change was improved unanimously, without even the need for a cursoryrecount.

A suggestion was made that some issues of our monthly AMSTAT column shouldfocus on the day to day activities of members, in order to alert thereadership of the various roles of environmental statisticians. Incomingpublications editor John Bailer will try to work this in. This, ofcourse, brought up the topic of how the December AMSTAT News failed tocarry an article from our section. It seems that ASA just changed itsmanaging editor, and regrettably the changeover occurred just at thedeadline date. One envisions the e-mail message containing our file to besitting on a newly defunct account. We are certainly trying to remedythis. I should note that the December article was written by me, as iscustomary at the end of the year for the outgoing chair. The outpouring ofthousands of queries asking for my missing article was heart warming. OK,OK, thousands plus or minus some margin of error.

In new business, we are still seeking volunteers for the roundtableluncheon discussions in Atlanta this summer. These are usually veryinformative, as they provide an informal opportunity to have a discussionon timely topics with leading experts in the field. So if you have a topicin mind, and would like to chair the discussion, please contact ProgramChair Tim Gregoire.

Also in new business we are trying to keep our list of current sectionmembers current. In this computer age, that should be an easy task. Itisn't, but we are working on it. More importantly, we are trying to makesure that the list increases in size, as a growing, enthusiastic membershipis exactly what we need.

This concluded the last executive committeemeeting for 2000. Incoming chair Linda Young will call the next one in thespring of 2001. We encourage all our members to be active, and seekexecutive office to help shape the direction of our profession for the 21stcentury.

The theme of the ENAR 2001 Spring Meeting is "The Impact of Technology onBiometrics." The meeting has been organized around a variety of Theme,Invited, and Contributed paper sessions. ENVR is sponsoring a Theme sessiontitled "Biometric Applications of Remotely Sensed Data." This sessionincludes papers on the use of remotely sensed data for the USGSMulti-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) program, the USDA-NRCS NationalResources Inventory (NRI), detecting minefields, and an archaeologicalapplication. Additional sessions of particular interest to ENVR membersinclude an Invited paper session titled "Hierarchical Models for Multi-ScaleSpatial Data," and Contributed paper sessions titled "Environmental andEcological Modeling," "Statistical Methods and Environmental Risk," and"Tools and Techniques for Spatial Modeling." In addition, a round-tableluncheon has been scheduled around the discussion topic of using remotelysensed data in inventory and monitoring.