This is a manifesto for remote sensing to support individual-based ecology. Or at least, as close as you’re ever going to see to a manifesto for remote sensing to support individual-based ecology.

It’s in the form of a paper. I wrote the paper for my intro to complexity course. I wrote it almost entirely between the hours of 8pm and 5am the night before it was due, so it’s a bit ragged. Before that it was a presentation for the class.

Remote sensing is the use of sensors to take measurements of things you aren’t touching, which is one of those definitions broad enough to include all the things people might want to apply it to and not narrow enough to be useful to anybody. Mostly it’s using satellites to make images of the landscape, but it can be a lot of other things too.

Individual-based ecology is the name Volker Grimm and Steve Railsback gave to a branch of ecology they think has been sneakily coming into existence as a consequence of the growth of “individual-based modeling” by ecologists. It’s the ecology response to complexity. It’s far cooler than sliced bread.

Remote sensing to provide real data to make better individual based ecology is pretty much what I want to do. A couple of people are doing it. There are lots of reasons why it’s probably not a good idea.

All of these things and more are in the manifesto-paper.

The paper is here.

The slideshow is here

…but I strive to be more Steve than Bill in my slideshows (or better yet, more Larry than anybody) so it hopefully won’t make much sense without the audio channel.