Contacting Us:

If you are interested in our research or software, please contact:

Steve Railsback Adjunct professor, HSU Department of Mathematics and Lang, Railsback & Assoc. Arcata, California E-mail: steven.railsback@humboldt.edu

Chris Dugaw Humboldt State University Department of Mathematics Arcata, California Phone: 707-826-4251; Fax: 707-826-3140 E-mail: dugaw@humboldt.edu

Who We Are

The individual-based modeling program at Humboldt State is a collaboration among the Department of Mathematics (Environmental Systems - Mathematical Modeling Graduate Program), Lang, Railsback & Assoc. (an extremely small research consulting firm), software developers, and on-campus organizations including the U.S.D.A. Forest Service's Redwood Sciences Laboratory, the California Cooperative Fisheries Research Unit, and Humboldt State departments of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Environmental Resource Engineering.

• The model and software development team is led by Steve Railsback. Dr. Railsback has been conducting fisheries research for California agencies and utilities since 1992, including building and testing fish IBMs. From 1986 to 1992, he conducted hydropower and fisheries research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dr. Railsback is a consulting scientist and adjunct professor, HSU Department of Mathematics.
  
  
• Our head fish ecologist is Dr. Bret Harvey of the Forest Service's Redwood Sciences Laboratory and adjunct professor, HSU Fisheries. Bret and his colleagues Rod Nakamoto and Jason White provide ecological expertise, conduct field and laboratory studies to support and test model assumptions, and participate very actively in the development and application of our fish models.
  
  
• Our current software developer is Colin Sheppard. Colin has degrees in computer science and engineering from Stanford and Humboldt State Universities and is a research engineer at Humboldt State's Schatz Energy Research Lab.
  
  
• The Principal Investigator for this project from 1999 to 2007 was Dr. Roland Lamberson, now Professor Emeritus of Mathematics. Dr. Lamberson participated in the development of a number of individual-based models, including the pioneering (early 1990s) LANDSCAPE spotted owl model.
  
  
• Our software was developed and maintained through 2010 by Steve Jackson. Steve is a graduate of the Environmental Modeling program at Humboldt State and an experienced Swarm programmer. Steve is now on the Mathematics faculty at College of the Redwoods, Eureka, CA.
  
  
• The prototype of our IBM software was developed by Glen Ropella and Chris Langton of The Swarm Corp. Dr. Langton and Glen were formerly staff of the Santa Fe Institute, a leading center of research on complex systems and agent-based modeling.

External and International Collaborators

We have been lucky enough to visit, collaborate, and publish (see the Products and Publications page) with many others, including the following.

• Volker Grimm, Karin Frank, and colleagues, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Germany. The Department of Ecological Modelling at this institute is a global leader, especially in individual-based modeling. Dr. Grimm actively collaborates with us on publications concerning modeling theory and application of individual-based models to ecological theory.
• Prof. Jarl Giske, Geir Huse (now: Institute of Marine Research), and colleagues in the Theoretical Ecology Group, Department of Biology, University of Bergen, Norway. This group is another global leader in individual-based modeling, especially of marine fish.
• John Goss-Custard (retired; CEH Dorset) and Richard Stillman (University of Bournemouth, UK) are pre-eminent and pioneering individual-based modelers of shorebirds.
• Fish ecologist Charles Gowan did sabbatical research at our Little Jones Creek study site in the summer of 2005. He addressed the question: How do trout find good habitat? Our stream trout model assumes that individuals are good at finding the best available habitat within a daily time step. But how good are real trout at finding feeding habitat, and what cues do they use to identify it? This study produced the paper "Short-term cues used by foraging trout in a California stream" by C. Gowan, in Environmental Biology of Fishes.   The abstract is here.
• Computer scientist Steve Lytinen of DePaul University spent sabbatical semesters with us in the fall of 2005 and in 2011. He worked with us to review the various software platforms for individual-based modeling---e.g., Repast, Swarm, NetLogo---and to develop materials to help researchers get started with these platforms. Products include a publication reviewing five platforms and a set of (now widely used) template models for each platform, available at the Swarm Development Group site. Steve also helps us teach modeling short-courses.
• Tamara Grand, Simon Fraser University; Dr. Grand visited us in September, 2000 and collaborated with us on development of several models.

Sponsors

Our sponsors have included the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison Company, the Electric Power Research Institute, Columbia Basin Research, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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