David Conesa

University of Valencia | UV · Department of Statistics and Operations Research

With the branding of a city as green increasingly serving to amplify attractiveness andinvestment while also contributing to patterns of green gentrification, the incentive to link real estate development and green space is growing. Yet, little is known about the extent to which this incentive has generated a spatial relationship between green spac...

Changes in land use patterns have significant environmental and socioeconomic impacts, making it crucial for policymakers to understand their causes and consequences. This study, part of the European LAMASUS (Land Management for Sustainability) project, aims to support the EU's climate neutrality target by developing a governance model through coll...

Combining data has become an indispensable tool for managing the current diversity and abundance of data. But, as data complexity and data volume swell, the computational demands of previously proposed models for combining data escalate proportionally, posing a significant challenge to practical implementation. This study presents a sequential cons...

Species Distribution Models (SDMs) have been widely applied in ecology to analyze the historical and future patterns of marine species' distributions. With the increasing impact of climate change in recent decades, understanding potential shifts in species distributions has become a crucial challenge. Research on alterations in spatial and temporal...

Estimating changes in the biomass of a fish stock is crucial for successful management. However, fishery assessment may be affected by the quality of the inputs used in stock assessment models. Survey biomass indices derived from fishery-independent and catch per unit effort (CPUE) biomass indices derived from fishery-dependent data are key inputs...

Outbreak response to quarantine pathogens and pests in the European Union (EU) is regulated by the EU Plant Health Law, but the performance of outbreak management plans in terms of their effectiveness and efficiency has been quantified only to a limited extent. As a case study, the disease dynamics of almond leaf scorch, caused by Xylella fastidios...

In the study of plant disease epidemics, the state of each individual in the population and their spatial location should be considered when modeling disease spread. We present a model to describe the spread of plant diseases, where the infection of a susceptible individual depends on the transmission rate of infected individuals and the spatial co...

Species distribution modelling (SDM) of marine organisms is widely developed for biogeography, ecology and management purposes. However, most studies continue to focus on the Global North, with fewer examples for the Global South. We carried out a bibliometric analysis to characterise aspects of studies conducting SDM for species in the Southwester...

Continuous space species distribution models (SDMs) have a long-standing history as a valuable tool in ecological statistical analysis. Geostatistical and preferential models are both common models in ecology. Geostatistical models are employed when the process under study is independent of the sampling locations, while preferential models are empl...

Extreme events have been studied in the field of ecology for many years, either from a purely descriptive point of view in its principles, or last decades from an inferential and/or predictive perspective to try to understand them. The first problem to be addressed in the study of extreme events is the definition of the event itself: can we speak o...

Marine Ecosystem Models (MEMs) have been developed to analyse the past and future dynamics of life in the oceans. One of such efforts is EcoOcean, a complex, mechanistic and spatio-temporal explicit MEM of the global oceans based on a trophodynamic core. EcoOcean requires as inputs the species native ranges and suitable habitats, and for key enviro...

The plant pathogenic bacterium Xylella fastidiosa is a priority quarantine pathogen in the EU (Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2072). In Alicante, Spain, the presence of X. fastid-iosa was first reported in 2017, as the cause of almond leaf scorch disease (ALSD). Based on the legislation that establishes specific measures against this...

In ecology, Species Distribution Models (SDMs) are a statistical tool that has seen a substantial expansion in its implementation over the last two decades. Along with their widespread use, the complexity of the data analysed and the structures of the models used have increased. This has led to the development of various tools to facilitate the inc...

In ecology we may find scenarios where the same phenomenon (species occurrence, species abundance, etc.) is observed using two different types of samplers. For instance, species data can be collected from scientific surveys with a completely random sample pattern, but also from opportunistic sampling (e.g., whale or bird watching fishery commercial...

Seabirds are bioindicators of marine ecosystems health and one of the world's most endangered avian groups. The creation of marine protected areas plays an important role in the conservation of marine environment and its biodiversity. The distributions of top predators, as seabirds, have been commonly used for the management and creation of these f...

Ecological niche models (ENMs) and species distribution models (SDMs) have been widely applied to various studies relevant to biogeography, conservation biology, and ecology. These modelling techniques seek to develop spatial maps for projecting , among others past, current, and future species distributions. Born in the field of terrestrial ecology...

This paper introduces a Laplace approximation to Bayesian inference in Dirichlet regression models, which can be used to analyze a set of variables on a simplex exhibiting skewness and heteroscedasticity, without having to transform the data. These data, which mainly consist of proportions or percentages of disjoint categories, are widely known as...

In the study of plant disease epidemics, there is often an interest in the state at the individual level to analyze disease progression, where the spatial structure of the population should be considered. Based on the disease status of the individuals, we developed a model to simulate plant disease spread in time and space, where the spatial depend...

Introduction: Although cities globally are increasingly mobilizing re-naturing projects to address diverse urban socio-environmental and health challenges, there is mounting evidence that these interventions may also be linked to the phenomenon known as green gentrification. However, to date the empirical evidence on the relationship between greens...

Although there is a great knowledge about individual anthropogenic threats to different fish species in the Mediterranean Sea, little is known about how these threats accumulate and interact to affect fish species richness in conjunction with environmental dynamics. This study assesses the role of these threats in the fish richness component and id...

Although urban greening is universally recognized as an essential part of sustainable and climate-responsive cities, a growing literature on green gentrification argues that new green infrastructure, and greenspace in particular, can contribute to gentrification, thus creating social and racial inequalities in access to the benefits of greenspace a...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a promising management tool for the conservation and recovery of marine ecosystems, as well as fishery management. MPAs are generally established as permanent closures but marine systems are dynamic, which has generated debate in favour of more dynamic designs. As a consequence, the identification of priority areas...

Patients with chronic diseases are frequent users of healthcare services. The systematic use of stratification tools and predictive models for this group of patients can be useful for health professionals in decision-making processes. The aim of this study was to design two new classifier systems for detecting the risk of hospital admission for eld...

Genomic heterogeneity constitutes one of the most distinctive features of cancer diseases, limiting the efficacy and availability of medical treatments. Tumorigenesis emerges as a strongly stochastic process, producing a variable landscape of genomic configurations. In this context, matrix factorisation techniques represent a suitable approach for...

Spatial species distribution models often assume isotropy and stationarity, implying that spatial dependence is direction-invariant and uniform throughout the study area. However, these assumptions are violated when dispersal barriers are present. Despite this, the issue of nonstationarity has been little explored in the context of plant health. Th...

The EU plant health legislation enforces the implementation of intensive surveillance programs for quarantine pests. After an outbreak, surveys are implemented to delimit the extent of the infested zone and to manage disease control. Surveillance in agricultural and natural environments can be enhanced by increasing the survey efforts. Budget const...

Circular leaf spot (CLS), caused by Plurivorosphaerella nawae, is a serious disease affecting persimmon (Diospyros kaki) that is characterized by necrotic lesions on leaves, defoliation, and fruit drop. Under Mediterranean conditions, P. nawae forms pseudothecia in the leaf litter in winter, and ascospores are released in spring, infecting suscepti...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13253-020-00423-1

Spatial models often assume isotropy and stationarity, implying that spatial dependence is direction invariant and uniform throughout the study area. However, these assumptions are violated when dispersal barriers are present in the form of geographical features or disease control interventions. Despite this, the issue of non-stationarity has been...

In this work, we discuss the use of a methodological approach for modelling spatial relationships among species by means of a Bayesian spatial coregionalized model. Inference and prediction is performed using the integrated nested Laplace approximation methodology to reduce the computational burden. We illustrate the performance of the coregionaliz...

Fishery restricted areas (FRAs) are pivotal for the mitigation of fishery impacts, but the designation of optimum FRAs is complex, and currently there is no quantitative guideline to assess the spatio-temporal variability of conservation priority areas. Fishery systems are naturally dynamic, and shifts may at two different levels, the species level...

The protection of fish nurseries has been recognized as a useful tool to efficiently manage fisheries given that protected areas enhance the recruitment of target species. To identify and locate potential nursery areas, a solid understanding of species-environment relationships and their spatio-temporal dynamics is needed. Within this context, in t...

We provide an integrated capture–recapture–recovery framework for partially monitored populations. In these studies, live resightings are only observable at a set of monitored locations, so that if an individual leaves these specific locations, they become unavailable for capture. Additional ring-recovery data reduce the corresponding bias obtained...

Survival is a key demographic characteristic in many areas including both human demography and population ecology. However, it is often the case that data collection protocols are different in these areas, resulting in different models and methods of analysis. This paper is motivated for the different emphasis given to the elicitation of the tempor...

The plant-pathogenic bacterium Xylella fastidiosa was first reported in Europe in 2013, in the province of Lecce, Italy, where extensive areas were affected by the olive quick decline syndrome, caused by the subsp. pauca. In Alicante, Spain, almond leaf scorch, caused by X. fastidiosa subsp. multiplex, was detected in 2017. The effects of climatic...

Although Data Envelopment Analysis models have been intensively used for measuring efficiency, the inclusion of undesirable outputs has extended their use to analyse relevant fields such as environmental efficiency. In this context, slacks-based measure (SBM) models offer a remarkable alternative, largely due to their ability to deal with undesirab...

Understanding the spatiotemporal persistence of fish distributions is key to defining fish hotspots and effective fisheries restricted areas (FRAs). Hierarchical Bayesian spatiotemporal models provide an excellent framework to understand these distributions as they can accommodate different spatiotemporal behaviour in the data, primarily due to the...

Background: Disentangling the drivers of genetic differentiation is one of the cornerstones in evolution. This is because genetic diversity, and the way in which it is partitioned within and among populations across space, is an important asset for the ability of populations to adapt and persist in changing environments. We tested three major hypot...

Current legislation enforces the implementation of intensive surveillance programs for quarantine plant pathogens. After an outbreak, surveys are implemented to delimit the geographic extent of the pathogen and execute disease control. The feasibility of control programs is highly dependent on budget availability, thus it is necessary to target and...

Rapidly detecting the beginning of influenza outbreaks helps health authorities to reduce their impact. Accounting for the spatial distribution of the data can greatly improve the performance of an outbreak detection method by promptly detecting the first foci of infection. The use of Hidden Markov chains in temporal models has shown to be great to...

In long-lived species, such as seabirds, immature survival is the most important life history parameter after adult survival. The assessment of immature survival has often been difficult due to extended periods in which young birds remain unobservable at sea. This study presents results on survival of immature Common Murre (Uria aalge) obtained fro...

Circular leaf spot (CLS), caused by Plurivorosphaerella nawae, is a serious disease of persimmon (Diospyros kaki) inducing necrotic lesions on leaves, defoliation and fruit drop. Under Mediterranean conditions, P. nawae forms pseudothecia in the leaf litter during winter and ascospores are released in spring infecting susceptible leaves. Persimmon...

This paper analyses the determinants of the going public decision of the non-financial firms that were listed in the Spanish Continuous Market through an Initial Public Offering of shares (IPO) in the period 1997–2013. We employ series of characteristics related to the firms and the economic environment and logit regression methods in order to find...

The increasing development of techniques applied to species distribution models (SDMs) has allowed them to be widely used in different areas such as ecology and epidemiology. The SDMs are useful tools to establish suitable conditions for the expansion of populations, to evaluate the associations of biotic and abiotic factors with the geographic ext...

Xylella fastidiosa is a phytopathogenic bacterium regulated in the European Union (EU) to avoid its introduction and spread within all Member States. The current legal provisions specify the implementation of an intensive surveillance progam in those regions in which the presence of disease was confirmed. The main aim of this plan is to make an acc...

One of the major goals of ecology is to understand the spatio-temporal dynamics of species. Commonly the habitat relevance is analyzed using Species Distribution Models (SDMs). These models link information on the presence/absence or abundance of a species to environmental variables to predict where (and how much of) a species is likely to be prese...

Dirichlet regression models can be used to analyze a set of variables lying in a bounded interval that sum up to one exhibiting skewness and heteroscedasticity, without having to transform the data. These data which mainly consist of proportions or percentages of disjoint categories are widely known as compositional data and are common in areas suc...

This paper introduces a Laplace approximation to Bayesian inference in regression models for multivariate response variables. We focus on Dirichlet regression models, which can be used to analyze a set of variables on a simplex exhibiting skewness and heteroscedasticity, without having to transform the data. These data, which mainly consist of prop...

Global climate change (GCC) may be imposing distribution range shifts in many organisms worldwide. Multiple efforts are currently focused on the development of models to better predict distribution range shifts due to GCC. We addressed this issue by including intra‐specific genetic structure and spatial autocorrelation (SAC) of data in distribution...

Worldwide, cetacean species have started to be protected, but they are still very vulnerable to accidental damage from an expanding range of human activities at sea. To properly manage these potential threats we need a detailed understanding of the seasonal distributions of these highly mobile populations. To achieve this goal, a growing effort has...

Species Distribution Models (SDMs) are now being widely used in ecology for management and conservation purposes across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine realms. The increasing interest in SDMs has drawn the attention of ecologists to spatial models and, in particular, to geostatistical models, which are used to associate observations of species...

A methodological approach for modelling the spatial multivariate distribution of multiple bioclimatic indices is presented. The value of the indices is modelled by means of a Bayesian conditional coregionalised linear model. Elicitation of prior distributions and approximation of posterior distributions of the parameters in the proposed model are a...

The use of complex statistical models has recently increased substantially in the context of species distribution behavior. This complexity has made the inferential and predictive processes challenging to perform. The Bayesian approach has become a good option to deal with these models due to the ease with which prior information can be incorporate...

Computational advances in smart-phone technology and the development of expert systems has been an opportunity to devise the MAVIE-Lab an innovative Mobile Health Application (mHealth) for primary prevention of Home, Leisure and Sport Injuries (HLIs). Here, we present MAVIE-Lab Sports, the first module of the application focused on sports injuries....

This study compared different spatio-temporal model structures to infer the distributional patterns of Mullus barbatus in the GSA06 of the Spanish Mediterranean using MEDITS trawl survey data, whic is performed every year in spring. Results indicate that Mullus barbatus follows a very persistent distribution at this time of the year.

This study compared different spatio-temporal model structures to infer the distributional patterns of Lophius budegassa the GSA06 of the Spanish Mediterranean using MEDITS trawl survey data, which is performed every year in spring. Results indicate that Lophius budegassa follows a rather opportunistic distribution at this time of the year.