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School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography

Dr J. Gibbons - Staff Profile

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Dr James Gibbons
Research Lecturer in Ecological Modelling

Thoday Building, room F6a

Email: j.gibbons@bangor.ac.uk

Tel: 01248 382461 (from U.K.)
+44 1248 382461 (International)

Fax: 01248 354997 (from U.K.)
+44 1248 354997 (International)

Research Interests

Application of advanced statistical procedures (model selection, Bayesian modelling, MCMC) to mechanistic environmental science, agriculture and ecological models

Statistical analysis of experimental data, model development and programming using C++ and R

Farm level modelling, specifically the economic impact of policy change and effective adaptation to policy change

Impact and adaptation of agriculture to climatic change, specifically mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from farming, and farm and catchment level adaptation to water shortage

Research Students


Sophie Williams, Ex Situ Conservation of Harvested Plant Species (2009-2012)


Fatemeh Bakhtiari, Improving Choice Experiments for Valuation and Management of Forest Biodiversity (2010-2013)


Salamatu Fada, Climate change and carbon storage (2011-2014)

Recent Publications

Williams, S.J., Jones, J.P.G., Clubbe, C. and Gibbons, J.M. (2012) Training programmes can change behaviour and encourage the cultivation of over-harvested plant species. PLoS One in press Feb 2012

Williams, S.J., Jones, J.P.G., Clubbe, C., Sharrock, S. and Gibbons, J.M. (2012) Why are some biodiversity policies implemented and others ignored? Lessons from the uptake of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation by botanic gardens. Biodiversity and Conservation 21: 175-187.

Christie, M. and Gibbons, J.M. (2011) The effect of individual 'ability to choose' (scale heterogeneity) on the valuation of environmental goods. Ecological Economics 70: 2250-2257.

Gibbons, J.M., Nicholson, E., Milner-Gulland, E.J. and Jones, J.P.G. (2011) Should payments for biodiversity conservation be based on action or results? Journal of Applied Ecology 48: 1218-1226.

Ressurreição, A., Gibbons, J., Bentley, C., Burdon, D., Atkins, J., Kaiser, M., Austen, M., Santos, R.S., Dentinho, T.P., Zarzycki, T. and Edwards-Jones, G. (2011) Different cultures, different values: the role of cultural variation in public’s WTP for marine species conservation. Biological Conservation in press Nov 2011

Ressurreição, A., Gibbons, J., Ponce Dentinho, T., Kaiser, M., Santos, R.S. and Edwards-Jones, G. (2011) Economic valuation of species loss in the open sea. Ecological Economics 70: 729-739.

Gibbons, J.M., Wood, A.T.A., Craigon, J., Ramsden, S.J. and Crout, N.M.J. (2010) Semi-automatic reduction and upscaling of large models: a farm management example. Ecological Modelling 221: 590-598.

St John, F., Gibbons, J.M., Edwards-Jones, G. and Jones, J.P.G. (2010) Testing novel methods for assessing rule breaking in conservation. Biological Conservation 143: 1025-1030.

Crout, N., Kokkonen, T., Jakeman, A.J., Norton, J.P., Assaf, H., Croke, B.F.W., Gaber, N., Gibbons, J., Holzworth, D., Mysiak, J., Reichl, J., Seppelt, R., Wagener, T. and Whitfield, P. (2009) Good modelling practice. In: Environmental modelling, software and decision support: state of the art and new perspectives (ed. Jakeman, A.J., Voinov, A.A., Rizzoli, A.E. and Chen, S.H.), Elsevier Ltd.

Hockley, N., Gibbons, J.M. and Edwards-Jones, G. (2009) Risks of extreme heat and unpredictability. Science 324: 177.

Nicholson, E., Mace, G.M., Armsworth, P.R., Atkinson, G., Buckle, S., Clements, T., Ewers, R.M., Fa, J.E., Gardner, T.A., Gibbons, J., Grenyer, R., Metcalfe, R., Mourato, S., Muûls, M., Osborn, D., Peck, L., Reuman, D.C., Watson, C. and Milner-Gulland, E.J. (2009) A research agenda for ecosystem services in a changing world. Journal of Applied Ecology 46: 1139-1144.

Ramsden, J. and Gibbons, J.M. (2009) Modelling agri-environment interactions and trade-offs using Farm-adapt - integration of models, investigation of scale, dynamics and uncertainty. In Aspects of Applied Biology: Integrated Agricultural Systems: Methodologies, Modelling and Measuring. pp. 123-130.

Gibbons, J.M. and Ramsden, S.J. (2008) Integrated modelling of farm adaptation to climate change in East Anglia, UK: scaling and farmer decision making. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 127: 126-134.

Gibbons, J.M., Cox, G.M., Wood, A.T.A., Craigon, J., Ramsden, S.J., Tarsitano, D. and Crout, N.M.J. (2008)Applying Bayesian Model Averaging to mechanistic models: an example and comparison of methods. Environmental Modelling and Software 23: 973-985.

Hockley, N.J., Jones, J.P.G. and Gibbons, J. (2008) Technological progress must accelerate to reduce ecological footprint overshoot. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6: 122-123.

Jones, J.P.G., Andriamarovololona, M.M., Hockley, N., Gibbons, J.M. and Milner-Gulland, E.J. (2008) Testing the use of interviews as a tool for monitoring trends in the harvesting of wild species. Journal of Applied Ecology 45: 1205-1212.

Gibbons, J.M., Crout, N.M.J. and Healey, J.R. (2007) What role should null-hypothesis significance tests have in statistical education and hypothesis falsification? Trends in Ecology & Evolution 22: 445-446.

Cox, G.M., Gibbons, J.M., Wood, A.T.A., Craigon, J., Ramsden, S.J. and Crout, N.M.J. (2006) Towards the systematic simplification of mechanistic models. Ecological Modelling 198: 240-246.

Gibbons, J.M., Ramsden, S.J. and Blake, A. (2006) Modelling uncertainty in greenhouse gas emissions from UK agriculture at the farm level. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 112: 347-355.

Gibbons, J.M. and Ramsden, S.J. (2005) Robustness of recommended farm plans in England under climate change: Monte Carlo simulation. Climatic Change 68: 113-133.

Gibbons, J.M., Ramsden, S.J., Sparkes, D.L. and Wilson, P. (2005) Modelling optimal strategies for decreasing nitrate loss with variation in weather - a farm-level approach. Agricultural Systems 83: 113-134.