Environmental Statistics

Are you struggling to interpret the results of a recent data logger deployment? Do you need to estimate how many board-feet of timber, or how many deer, live in a parcel of forest? Do you need to retrieve and analyze historical streamflow data? Plan a field sampling campaign? Contact me and see how I can help.

Gordon doing winter fieldwork in Yellowstone Park.
(Robert Bower photo)

My professional career as a scientist began with locating earthquake epicenters for the Alaska Volcano Observatory, and moved on to include collecting water and ice samples and analyzing them on a mass spectrometer at the International Arctic Research Center. I spent many summers as a volunteer for the National Park Service in Yellowstone Park, and wrote several papers and presented at AGU about my hot springs research.

More recently I combined usage records from electric vehicles with weather data, to show how much the cars’ range was affected by changes in temperature. (Gasoline-powered cars are heated by waste heat from the engine, but electric cars have to use the battery for both heating and air conditioning.)

I've added a new page devoted to my work in Yellowstone, featuring a discussion of how to measure the height of a geyser eruption, including the spectacular activity of Steamboat Geyser in the summer of 2018.

The view from our office window. Every fall we see dozens, sometimes hundreds, of swans on this one small lake!