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A sunrise over Crown Point at Columbia River Gorge. Students of Daniel McGarvey, Ph.D., used widely available climate data to model fish distributions in the waterway.

Students demonstrate validity of models that use free, publicly accessible climate data

Oct. 4, 2017

As concern about the consequences of climate change grows, researchers are thinking hard about the data and models that drive their understanding of these changes. Graduate students in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for Environmental Studies recently contributed to this effort by proving that free, publicly accessible climate data can predict habitat quality within river networks with as much accuracy as data from more complex and expensive sources.