Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Characterization Of Pathogen Airborne Inoculum Density By Information Theoretic Analysis Of Spore Trap Time Series Data, Robin A. Choudhury, Neil Mcroberts

School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

In a previous study, air sampling using vortex air samplers combined with species-specific amplification of pathogen DNA was carried out over two years in four or five locations in the Salinas Valley of California. The resulting time series data for the abundance of pathogen DNA trapped per day displayed complex dynamics with features of both deterministic (chaotic) and stochastic uncertainty. Methods of nonlinear time series analysis developed for the reconstruction of low dimensional attractors provided new insights into the complexity of pathogen abundance data. In particular, the analyses suggested that the length of time series data that it is practical …