January 2025 Workshop Summary: Round Table

For the first network meeting in the new year, we had a forward-looking round table to share recent news and what we will be working on in the coming months. It was also an opportunity to tap into each other’s knowledge and gather ideas on particular topics.

Besides this, some recent publications were shared, including:

• Mike Dunbar’s (Environment Agency), work on long-term trends in water quality has been published in a report on gov.uk.
• Megan Towers (NatureScot) worked extensively on Official Statistics for Scottish Terrestrial Breeding Birds and Scotland’s Natural Capital Asset Index, which have both been published recently.
• A fresh paper on automated plankton imaging and identification from work at Cefas.

Some resources were also signposted:

• zCompositions R package - imputation methods for compositional data with censored values, e.g. for environmental DNA and water chemistry data
• Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) - sharing and accessing UK marine data (18,000+ datasets on their portal)

Finally, an upcoming event that may be of interest:

• Environmental and Ecological Statistics Conference, 1-3 July in Lancaster.