Kathi Irvine, Ph.D.
Biography
Education
PhD. Statistics. Oregon State University
MS. Statistics. Oregon State University; MS. Ecology and Environmental Sciences. University of Maine
BS. Biology. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research Interest
I am a Research Statistician with the U.S. Geological Survey at the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center in Bozeman, Montana. Prior to finding my home in the federal system in 2011, I was an assistant professor at Montana State University (2008-2010). Since receiving my PhD in Statistics from Oregon State University in 2007, I have collaborated with ecologists and biologists charged with monitoring natural resources on federal and state lands. My team provides statistical support for monitoring programs led by the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and state agencies. Our work involves development of survey design and analysis strategies for a variety of plants, animals, and other indicators. We currently support monitoring of whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, upland plant communities throughout the Western US, and bats across North America.
My applied statistical research involves developing analytical approaches for ordinal data and bat acoustic surveys that better link the ecological and observation process within a Bayesian framework, applications of causal analysis, investigating spatial sampling designs, and model-assisted methods for status and trend analyses. I mentor statistics students and support graduate research assistants at Montana State University (MSU). Several of my students have participated in writing peer-reviewed papers during their time at MSU. I encourage students interested in ecological statistics to contact me for possible graduate research assistantships, paid summer work, and other opportunities.
Related Projects:
Science and Products
A comparison of adaptive sampling designs and binary spatial models: A simulation study using a census of Bromus inermis
Commonly in environmental and ecological studies, species distribution data are recorded as presence or absence throughout a spatial domain of interest. Field based studies typically collect observations by sampling a subset of the spatial domain. We consider the effects of six different adaptive and two non-adaptive sampling designs and choice of...
Irvine, Kathryn M.; Thornton, Jamie; Backus, Vickie M.; Hohmann, Matthew G.; Lehnhoff, Erik A.; Maxwell, Bruce D.; Michels, Kurt; Rew, LisaFemale elk contacts are neither frequency nor density dependent
Identifying drivers of contact rates among individuals is critical to understanding disease dynamics and implementing targeted control measures. We studied the interaction patterns of 149 female elk (Cervus canadensis) distributed across five different regions of western Wyoming over three years, defining a contact as an approach within one body...
Cross, Paul C.; Creech, Tyler G.; Ebinger, Michael R.; Manlove, Kezia R.; Irvine, Kathryn M.; Henningsen, John C.; Rogerson, Jared D.; Scurlock, Brandon M.; Creely, ScottThe effects of pulse pressure from seismic water gun technology on Northern Pike
We examined the efficacy of sound pressure pulses generated from a water gun for controlling invasive Northern Pike Esox lucius. Pulse pressures from two sizes of water guns were evaluated for their effects on individual fish placed at a predetermined random distance. Fish mortality from a 5,620.8-cm3 water gun (peak pressure source...
Gross, Jackson A.; Irvine, Kathryn M.; Wilmoth, Siri K.; Wagner, Tristany L.; Shields, Patrick A; Fox, Jeffrey R.Vegetation of natural and artificial shorelines in Upper Klamath Basin’s fringe wetlands
The Upper Klamath Basin (UKB) in northern California and southern Oregon supports large hypereutrophic lakes surrounded by natural and artificial shorelines. Lake shorelines contain fringe wetlands that provide key ecological services to the people of this region. These wetlands also provide a context for drawing inferences about how differing...
Ray, Andrew M.; Irvine, Kathryn M.; Hamilton, Andy S.Environmental fate model for ultra-low-volume insecticide applications used for adult mosquito management
One of the more effective ways of managing high densities of adult mosquitoes that vector human and animal pathogens is ultra-low-volume (ULV) aerosol applications of insecticides. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses models that are not validated for ULV insecticide applications and exposure assumptions to perform their human and...
Schleier, Jerome J.; Peterson, Robert K.D.; Irvine, Kathryn M.; Marshall, Lucy M.; Weaver, David K.; Preftakes, Collin J.Wildlife contact analysis: Emerging methods, questions, and challenges
Recent technological advances, such as proximity loggers, allow researchers to collect complete interaction histories, day and night, among sampled individuals over several months to years. Social network analyses are an obvious approach to analyzing interaction data because of their flexibility for fitting many different social structures as well...
Cross, Paul C.; Creech, Tyler G.; Ebinger, Michael R.; Heisey, Dennis M.; Irvine, Kathryn M.; Creel, ScottAssessing the status and trend of bat populations across broad geographic regions with dynamic distribution models
Bats face unprecedented threats from habitat loss, climate change, disease, and wind power development, and populations of many species are in decline. A better ability to quantify bat population status and trend is urgently needed in order to develop effective conservation strategies. We used a Bayesian autoregressive approach to develop dynamic...
Rodhouse, Thomas J.; Ormsbee, Patricia C.; Irvine, Kathryn M.; Vierling, Lee A.; Szewczak, Joseph M.; Vierling, Kerri T.Power analysis and trend detection for water quality monitoring data. An application for the Greater Yellowstone Inventory and Monitoring Network
An important consideration for long term monitoring programs is determining the required sampling effort to detect trends in specific ecological indicators of interest. To enhance the Greater Yellowstone Inventory and Monitoring Network’s water resources protocol(s) (O’Ney 2006 and O’Ney et al. 2009 [under review]), we developed a set of tools to...
Irvine, Kathryn M.; Manlove, Kezia; Hollimon, CynthiaEstimating temporal trend in the presence of spatial complexity: A Bayesian hierarchical model for a wetland plant population undergoing restoration
Monitoring programs that evaluate restoration and inform adaptive management are important for addressing environmental degradation. These efforts may be well served by spatially explicit hierarchical approaches to modeling because of unavoidable spatial structure inherited from past land use patterns and other factors. We developed Bayesian...
Rodhouse, T.J.; Irvine, K.M.; Vierling, K.T.; Vierling, L.A.Monitoring direct and indirect climate effects on whitebark pine ecosystems at Crater Lake National park
Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is the distinctive, often stunted, and picturesque tree line species in the American West. As a result of climate change, mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) have moved up in elevation, adding to nonnative blister rust (Cronartium ribicola) disease as a major cause of mortality in whitebark pine. At...
Smith, S.B.; Odion, D.C.; Sarr, D.A.; Irvine, K.M.Spatial design and strength of spatial signal: Effects on covariance estimation
In a spatial regression context, scientists are often interested in a physical interpretation of components of the parametric covariance function. For example, spatial covariance parameter estimates in ecological settings have been interpreted to describe spatial heterogeneity or “patchiness” in a landscape that cannot be explained by...
Irvine, Kathryn M.; Gitelman, Alix I.; Hoeting, Jennifer A.Evaluating shading bias in malaise and intercept traps
Foresters are increasingly focusing on landscape level management regimes. At the landscape level, managed acreage may differ substantially in structure and micro-climatic conditions. Trapping is a commonly used method to evaluate changes in insect communities across landscapes. Among those trapping techniques, Malaise and window-pane traps are...
Irvine, Kathryn M.; Woods, Stephen A.- « first
- ‹ previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4