Marine species distributions : from data to predictive models

The increased anthropogenic pressure on the marine environment through over-use and overfishing, invasion of species and global climate change has led to an urgent need for more knowledge on the marine ecosystem. Marine species distribution modelling is an important element of marine ecosystem management. It is relied upon by marine spatial planning for i.e. predicting biological resources, the design of marine protected areas, the designation of essential fish habitats, the assessment of species invasion risk, pest control, human-animal conflict prevention, ….This study aims to improve and contribute to the process and understanding of marine species distribution modelling in order to facilitate an in depth study of the trends, vectors and distribution of introduced seaweeds in Europe. More specifically we wanted to 1) provide quality indicators for the marine species distribution data available in the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), 2) make global datasets for species distribution modelling in the past, current and future climate more accessible in R, 3) explore the relevance of different predictors of marine species distributions with MarineSPEED, a marine benchmark dataset of more than 500 species, 4) investigate the introduction history and trends in introduced seaweeds in Europe, 5) evaluate the risk of aquarium trade as a vector for future introductions of seaweeds and 6) study the ability of species distribution modelling to predict the introduction and spread of introduced seaweeds and propose a method for identifying candidate areas for further spreading under climate change. The first part of this thesis concerns general aspects of marine species distributions, the environmental data used for modelling and the relevance of marine predictors of species distributions

A Unit Test Approach for Database Schema Evolution

Context: The constant changes in today’s business requirements demand continuous database revisions. Hence, database structures, not unlike software applications, deteriorate during their lifespan and thus require refactoring in order to achieve a longer life span. Although unit tests support changes to application programs and refactoring, there is currently a lack of testing strategies for database schema evolution. Objective: This work examines the challenges for database schema evolution and explores the possibility of using various testing strategies to assist with schema evolution. Specifically, the work proposes a novel unit test approach for the application code that accesses databases with the objective of proactively evaluating the code against the altered database. Method: The approach was validated through the implementation of a testing framework in conjunction with a sample application and a relatively simple database schema. Although the database schema in this study was simple, it was nevertheless able to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed approach. Results: After changes in the database schema, the proposed approach found all SELECT statements as well as the majority of other statements requiring modifications in the application code. Due to its efficiency with SELECT statements, the proposed approach is expected to be more successful with database warehouse applications where SELECT statements are dominant. Conclusion: The unit test approach that accesses databases has proven to be successful in evaluating the application code against the evolved database. In particular, the approach is simple and straightforward to implement, which makes it easily adoptable in practice

The Colour of Ocean Data: International Symposium on oceanographic data and information management, with special attention to biological data. Brussels, Belgium, 25-27 November 2002: book of abstracts

Ocean data management plays a crucial role in global as well as local matters. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission -with its network of National Oceanographic Data Centres- and the International Council of Scientific Unions- with its World Data Centres- have played a major catalysing role in establishing the existing ocean data management practices. No one can think of data management without thinking of information technology. New developments in computer hard- and software force us to continually rethink the way we manage ocean data. One of the major challenges in this is to try and close the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and to assist scientists in less fortunate countries to manage oceanographic data flows in a suitable and timely fashion. So far major emphasis has been on the standardisation and exchange of physical oceanographic data in open ocean conditions. But the colour of the ocean data is changing. The ‘blue’ ocean sciences get increasingly interested in including geological, chemical and biological data. Moreover the shallow sea areas get more and more attention as highly productive biological areas that need to be seen in close association with the deep seas. How to fill in the gap of widely accepted standards for data structures that can serve the deep ‘blue’ and the shallow ‘green’ biological data management is a major issue that has to be addressed. And there is more: data has to be turned into information. In the context of ocean data management, scientists, data managers and decision makers are all very much dependent on each other. Decision makers will stimulate research topics with policy priority and hence guide researchers. Scientists need to provide data managers with reliable and first quality controlled data in such a way that the latter can translate and make them available for the decision makers. But do they speak the same ‘language’? Are they happy with the access they have to the data? And if not, can they learn from each other’s expectations and experience? The objective of this symposium is to harmonize ocean colours and languages and create a forum for data managers, scientists and decision makers with a major interest in oceanography, and open to everyone interested in ocean data management

Research and technology

Significant research and technology activities at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) during Fiscal Year 1990 are reviewed. Research in human factors engineering, the Space Shuttle, the Space Station Freedom, space exploration and related topics are covered