Wikipedia

Ray Czaplewski

Joined 18 July 2010

Raymond L. Czaplewski, Ph.D., founded Environmetrika in 2015. Previously, his professional career spanned 34 years with the United States Forest Service, including 3 years on the Bighorn National Forest in northern Wyoming (USA) and the reminder at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, Inventory, Monitoring and Analysis Science Program. He had been a strategic planner with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Address communications to Raymond_Czaplewski@EnvironMetrika.org

Raymond L Czaplewski, Ph.D.


Experience

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Dr. Czaplewski has extensive experience in mathematical statistics with national and international forest inventory and monitoring applications. Before his retirement in 2010, he was a senior scientist with the national Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, and a member of the national FIA Management Team for over eight years. He recently founded the organization Environmetrika to better pursue his research and development relevant to annual monitoring systems for forest and rangelands, especially incorporation of time-series sample survey data from multi-sensor multi-temporal remote sensing, field measurements and ecosystem models.

Dr Czaplewski has a more complete resume at Linkedin.

Awards

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Group Honor Award for Excellence from Secretary of Agriculture; Best Scientific Paper, Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society; Certificate of Merit for unprecedented partnership to map the nation’s forest cover; Certificate of Merit as Chairman of Geospatial’03 Conference; Certificate of Merit for precedent-setting decision in favor of the Forest Service; Honorary Member of the Finnish Society of Forest Science; Certificate of Appreciation for Evaluation and Use of Natural Resource Information for Corporate Data Bases; Certificate of Appreciation for National Monitoring and Evaluation Workgroup; Certificate of Appreciation for national quality assurance plan for FIA; Certificate of Appreciation for the North American Background Paper for UNEP/FAO Global Forest Assessments; Certificate of Merit for technology transfer of personal research; Certificate of Merit for linking a geographic information system to resource databases for land management planning

Education and Background

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Dr. Czaplewski earned his Ph.D. in Quantitative Ecology from the Department of Rangeland Ecosystem Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins Colorado; his M.S in Systems Ecology from the Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie Wyoming; his B.A. in Biology from Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois. He graduated from St. Patrick High School (Chicago) and St. Mary of the Woods Elementary School (Chicago). He served his country honorably in the Army of the United States, Field Artillery, during the Vietnam War era; he served his fellow citizens with respect and pride as a career public servant; and he continues to serve his community as a Senior Member of Kiwanis International.

Monitoring Natural Resources at National and Global Scales

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Dr Czaplewski has extensive experience in mathematical-statistics for longitudinal sample-surveys, which is an essential component of any scientifically-credible broad-scale monitoring system. For most of his career, he served within the United States Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program. FIA uses over 150,000 field plots across the USA that are re-measured every 5 to 10 years. This time-series of field-data is the foundation for annual statistical estimates of numerous indicators of forest conditions at the national- to county-scales. During the past 10-years, FIA has incorporated additional monitoring information from multi-temporal remote sensing. Dr. Czaplewski is among FIA's leading scientists in use of multivariate remotely sensed data with multivariate field data to improve timeliness and reliablity of FIA information. In addition, Dr. Czaplewski was the lead consulting statistician for the 1990 Global Forest Resource Assessment conducted by the Food and Agriclutural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. As a member of a small FAO team he helped design and implement a global monitoring system that quantified the rates of Tropical Deforestation between 1980 and 1990 at sub-continental to global scales. This system used a probablity sample of satellite data from the Landsat program, which was pre-stratified with a mathematical model that predicted rates of deforestation based on socioeconomic and climatic data.

Time-series of Sample Survey Data

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Dr. Czaplewski conducts research and development in multivariate applications of the Kalman filter to time series in sampling (statistics). The objective is to improve relevancy, timeliness and efficiency of the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program as articulated its 2007 Strategic Plan. This research applies concepts from state space (controls) and elementary systems ecology to analyze time series from annual FIA panels. This R&D also includes the static Kalman, which improves population estimates with auxiliary census data and independent sample survey estimates from remote sensing and administrative records. In these multivariate applications, the state vector can have dimensions of 10 to 1000 or more state variables, which represent time-series for areas of different forest conditions, numbers of trees by different species and size classes, and wood volumes categorized into different conditions. Such large dimensions produce serious numerical round-off errors, which are endemic to numerical computations with digital computers. Dr. Czaplewski explores numerical mitigation methods that are well-developed in the engineering literatures. These employ the square-root filter and numeric methods suitable for singular and ill-conditioned covariance matrices. Details are partially documented in past publications by Dr. Czaplewski.

Accuracy Assessment of Geospatial Databases

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Dr. Czaplewski conducts extensive technology transfer in sample-survey statistics and design-based estimation related to accuracy assessment of geospatial databases. The most common type of database is based on pixel-level predictions of categorical and continuous land-cover variables with multispectral data from earth-observing orbital satellites, such as Landsat. Together with Drs. Stephen Stehman and Giles Foody, he presented an introductory workshop at the 9th international Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, also known as Accuracy2010 . Those interested in the topic are encouraged to study the presentations at ftp://ftp2.fs.fed.us/incoming/rmrs/FIA/rczaplewski/Accuracy2010/

Expert Consultant on Mathematical Models and Statistical Estimators used by the US Forest Service

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Dr Czaplewski served as principal statistician for the US Forest Service (USFS) during 8 years of litigation related to timber appraisals in the appeal by Lance Logging Co., AGBCA No. 98-137-1, 01-1 BCA. The appellants challenged use of Dr Czaplewski's stem-profile models (taper equations) and their inherent uncertainty. The USFS uses these and many other types of mathematical and statistical models to aid in strategic and tactical decision-making. Dr Czaplewski effectively explained uncertainty in sample surveys and predictions by mathematical models. On March 20, 2001, Judge Keith R Szeliga ruled in favor of the US Forest Service. The outcome of AGBCA No. 98-137-1 set precedence for use of all such models by the US Government. Dr Czaplewski's service was acknowledged by Regional Forester Rick Cables, who awarded Dr Czaplewski a "Certificate of Merit for precedent-setting decision in favor of the Forest Service." In separate adjudication, Dr Czaplewski served in a similar role during defense of the Lolo National Forest, publishing Application of Forest Inventory and Analysis data to estimate the amount of old growth forest and snag density in the Northern Region of the National Forest System. US District Judge Donald W. Molloy ruled in favor of the USFS. For references, contact Daniel Rosenbluth, Senior Counsel, Office of the General Counsel, USDA (Mountain Region), 740 Simms Street, Suite # 309, Golden, Colorado 80401, tele. 303-275-5540.

Partial List of Scientific Publications

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As of 2015, Dr. Czaplewski has published a total of 141 scientific and technical papers

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