At our recent conference in Darwin, we were pleased to announce the 2023 recipient of the ARDC Award for New Developers of Open Source Software in Ecology. This year, it has been awarded to Dr Roozbeh Valavi, Senior Experimental Scientist at CSIRO, for their software ‘blockCV’.

The software provides spatially or environmentally aware cross-validation techniques for evaluating the accuracy of predictions from a variety of ecological models, including species distribution modelling. It can also be applied to a variety of other spatial ecological models.

“Modelling has become an essential element in modern ecology due to its fundamental role in ecological prediction, hypothesis testing, and decision-making,” said award winner Dr Roozbeh Valavi.

“Conventional random cross-validation techniques have been shown to result in underestimation of prediction error,” he said. “As a result, non-random cross-validation methods are gaining interest in ecology to improve accuracy assessment.”

To address this issue, the R programming package blockCV was developed to provide more robust validation of spatial ecological models. The package addresses common issues encountered with ecological data such as ‘presence-background’ data.

The software is publicly available through GitHub and CRAN.  Since its initial release in 2018, it has been downloaded over 38,000 times from CRAN. The corresponding paper published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution has been cited 295 times, and the package has been adopted by six other packages. 

“This award opens up new opportunities for collaboration with other researchers, institutions, and organisations who share similar interests and goals,” said Dr Valavi.

“It will also inspire and motivate me to continue the development of open-source software for improving ecological practices, further refine and expand the functionalities of my package, and potentially support newly published methods for evaluating ecological models.”

Other members of the team included Jane Elith, José J. Lahoz-Monfort, Gurutzeta Guillera-Arroita. Congratulations to the entire blockCV team!

This award is sponsored by the Australian Research Data Commons in recognition of the valuable contribution made by software to ecological research. It aims to support efforts to develop and share methodology, models and data in ecology and management of Australia’s ecological communities. It also focuses on supporting researchers new to software development, who take on the role of the lead applicant for this award.

First prize is a $4000 research grant and award presentation at the annual ESA conference. The award also includes an additional $1000 towards travel costs and free registration to attend the annual ESA conference.