EESセミナー(10月30日)開催のお知らせ

Date＆time: October 30, 2023, 10:30~16:00
Room: D101

Lecturer: Dr. Jonathan Lefcheck (University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science)

Workshop Title: Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in R

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a technique that unites traditional inferential statistics, such as generalized linear modeling, and causal theory to test multivariate hypotheses of cause-and-effect. It translates a simple “box-and-arrow” diagram to a series of mathematical equations, which can be solved to test the magnitude, direction, and significance of causal relationships.

In this short course, I will review the history and philosophy of structural equation modeling and provide a short description of both the “global” and “local estimation” methods. In the afternoon workshop, we will use the software R to apply both methods to an example dataset. I will be available after the workshop to answer specific questions about SEM.

Experience in fitting linear regression (`lm`) in R is required. Please install R (https://cran.r-project.org/) and Rstudio (https://posit.co/downloads/) before the afternoon workshop, if you wish to follow the live coding demonstration.

Schedule:

10:30-12:00 General lecture on piecewise SEM and its application in ecological study

13:00-16:00 Practice of data analyses using piecewise SEM on R

Biography:

Jon is a Research Scientist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. He is a marine community ecologist, biodiversity scientist, and biostatistician with a love for seagrasses. He has also studied coral reefs, mangroves, oyster reefs and even terrestrial systems, like grasslands and agriculture. He regularly works with scientists, managers, and volunteers around the world to understand, monitor, conserve, and restore coastal ecosystems for the benefit of nature and of people. His work has been published in top-ranking journals like Science and Nature and regularly covered by popular media. He received his PhD in Marine Science from the College of William & Mary in 2015, was a post-doctoral researcher at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. Before his current position, he served as the Coordinating Scientist for the MarineGEO program at the Smithsonian Institution.