小蝌蚪APP researchers have earned international recognition for creating a mathematical model to determine how quickly wildlife can recover following natural disasters.
Dr. Azmy S. Ackleh, Dr. Ross Chiquet and Dr. Amy Veprauskas are recipients of the Rollie Lamberson Research Award. The global Resource Modeling Association presents the honor.
The team received the award during the association小蝌蚪APP檚 conference in May in Montreal for an academic journal article they wrote with two other collaborators. In it, the authors suggested a mathematical framework wildlife and environmental agencies can use to decide if animal populations have had sufficient time to recover after ecological disasters.
That determination can enable officials to decide how long conservation efforts 小蝌蚪APP limits on hunting, fishing and seafood harvesting, for example 小蝌蚪APP should continue, the authors wrote.
Ackleh is dean of the and a professor of applied mathematics at UL Lafayette. Chiquet and Veprauskas are assistant professors of .
Sharing the Lamberson prize are Dr. Tingting Tang, a 小蝌蚪APP graduate who is now a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics, 小蝌蚪APP of Notre Dame; and Dr. Hal Caswell, a biologist and emeritus research scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts.
Mathematical models replicate real-life situations, and use equations and data to predict future behavior.
The prize-winning article complements other research at the 小蝌蚪APP examining the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In April 2010, the wellhead on the rig exploded. Millions of barrels of crude streamed into the Gulf of Mexico before the well was capped three months later.
Shortly after, UL Lafayette researchers, including Ackleh and physics professor Dr. Natalia Sidorovskaia, began studying how the disaster affected sperm and beaked whales that live in the Gulf.
They used underwater acoustical devices to listen to and record the mammals as they communicated in clicks, whistles and other sounds. The noises enabled researchers to determine how the oil spill had affected whale populations.
A $5.9 million grant from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative that researchers received in 2014 funded the study as part of the Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center-Gulf Ecological Monitoring and Modeling consortium project.
小蝌蚪APP淕oMRI小蝌蚪APP檚 support has enabled 小蝌蚪APP researchers to examine the numerous effects the oil spill had on the Gulf and its inhabitants for the past five years, and it continues to do so. We are very grateful,小蝌蚪APP Ackleh said.
The acoustic data provided short-term information on the spill小蝌蚪APP檚 effect on the whales, while the model the article presented 小蝌蚪APP減rovides a means of studying possible long-term impacts,小蝌蚪APP he added. 小蝌蚪APP淭his research highlights the fact that mathematical models can provide powerful insights into biological problems even when little data is available.小蝌蚪APP
The article suggests that to predict when a population will reach pre-disaster levels, it小蝌蚪APP檚 key to estimate the number of adult animals in a population. 小蝌蚪APP淎 population with more adults is able to recover faster because adults are capable of contributing to population numbers through reproduction quicker than juveniles,小蝌蚪APP Ackleh explained.
Another factor to consider: how the magnitude of the disaster translates to reductions in survival rates of individuals. That小蝌蚪APP檚 more important to the long-term recovery of the population than the duration of the crisis.
The loss of life means there are fewer adults, so that suppresses the population小蝌蚪APP檚 recovery for a longer period, Ackleh said. He added that agencies should develop strategies to quickly mitigate a disaster小蝌蚪APP檚 impact. That小蝌蚪APP檒l help populations bounce back faster.
Though the authors used data about Gulf sperm whales and the Deepwater Horizon spill for their study, the model they produced can be applied to other animals and other crises as well, Ackleh said. 小蝌蚪APP淭his is a lesson learned for future disasters.小蝌蚪APP
The article appeared in the February 2019 issue of Natural Resource Modeling, a peer-reviewed journal. .
The Rollie Lamberson Research Award is named for a retired professor of mathematics at Humboldt State 小蝌蚪APP in California. The Resource Modeling Association presented the inaugural award in 2016.
The association includes researchers from around the world in the fields of mathematical modeling, natural resources management and environmental science. It was founded in 1980.
Photo caption: From left, Dr. Amy Veprauskas, Dr. Azmy S. Ackleh and Dr. Ross Chiquet, recipients of the Rollie Lamberson Research Award. (Photo credit: Doug Dugas / 小蝌蚪APP)