ssdtools: Open-Source Software for Water Quality Guidelines

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Clients: Province of BC, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) are the standard statistical method for deriving water quality and environmental guidelines. In 2018, Poisson Consulting released ssdtools, a peer-reviewed R package that fits SSDs using multiple distributions and model averaging, published in the Journal of Open Source Software (Thorley & Schwarz, 2018).

To make the method accessible to non-R users, Poisson Consulting followed up with shinyssdtools (Dalgarno, 2021, Journal of Open Source Software), a Shiny web application that provides a point-and-click interface for the same analyses. In 2025, ssdtools v2 (Thorley, Fisher, Fox & Schwarz, Journal of Open Source Software) added expanded distributions, censored data support, and improved model-averaging methods.

The tools are now used by state regulators in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. This project demonstrates our commitment to building open, transparent, and reproducible tools that raise the standard for evidence-based environmental protection.

Boreal Caribou and Wood Bison Population Monitoring

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Clients: Environment and Climate Change Canada, Province of Alberta

Reliable estimates of survival and recruitment are essential for managing species at risk, yet the analytical methods have historically been inconsistent across jurisdictions. Poisson Consulting developed two peer-reviewed R package suites to address this gap.

bbousuite (Dalgarno et al., 2025, Journal of Open Source Software) provides a standardized Bayesian workflow for estimating boreal caribou adult female survival and calf recruitment from hunter-based monitoring data. The suite handles common data-quality challenges, including small sample sizes, missing observations, and variable survey effort, and produces the estimates required for federal recovery planning.

bisonpicsuite (Hill, Choquette & Kortello, 2025, Journal of Open Source Software) applies similar principles to estimate wood bison population parameters from remote camera data, building on earlier state-space population modelling of the Mackenzie Wood Bison herd in the Northwest Territories.

Together, these tools demonstrate how purpose-built, open-source software can improve the consistency and transparency of wildlife monitoring across agencies and jurisdictions.

Software Development | Poisson Consulting

ssdtools: Open-Source Software for Water Quality Guidelines

Boreal Caribou and Wood Bison Population Monitoring