Download: Webinar Brief

The National Estuarine Research Reserves’ System-wide Monitoring Program (SWMP) data can contribute to research and discussion on climate change. The treatment of temperature data is of particular concern when applied to the analysis of interannual trends. Seasonal cycles can impose fluctuations that greatly exceed diurnal, tidal, or event-scale fluctuations, and seasonally skewed distribution of missing data biases calculations of annual or seasonal means.

This webinar provided insights on encoded algorithms for measuring temperature trends, including the conservative approach of replacing missing temperature data with smoothed day-of-the-year averages and seasonal decomposition as well as the benefits and disadvantages of alternative approaches.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Thomas Grothues has a Research Faculty appointment as a fish ecologist at Rutgers University and begins as Research Coordinator for Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve System in Fall 2019. He has been using SWMP data in peer-reviewed publications about fish habitat use, migration, and recruitment since 2007.

Learn more about: Developing New Ways to Analyze Reserve Monitoring Data