Dr Jon Barry

Environmental Statistician

Jon previously worked as a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Lancaster University, before joining Cefas in 2002. He has a particular interest in designing monitoring surveys and has developed an R-library “emon” to make this easier for scientists.

Jon is an author of over 90 peer-reviewed publications on a wide range of topics in ecology and environmental science. He is particularly interested in measuring biodiversity in benthic surveys and in statistical aspects of video surveys. He is interested in how data from different sources (e.g. liter count data from different trawl types) can be utilised to give informative answers.

Jon is active in the National Centre for Statistical Ecology (http://ncse.org.uk/) and was the main organiser of the 2013 workshop at Lowestoft. Jon is a good public speaker and has recently given seminars at the universities of Exeter, Sheffield, Lancaster and Edinburgh. He also organised the 2018 session on environmental monitoring at the Cardiff Royal Statistical Society conference.

Jon is a referee for many academic journals, including the Royal Statistical Society. He has also refereed Defra reports and advised both NE and the JNCC on statistical aspects of monitoring. Jon recently completed the ICES European assessment for seafloor litter. He also gives statistical advice to the European beach litter programme. In 2019, Jon developed and gave a successful “Bayesian for Beginners” course for marine scientists. The course is based on statistical concepts rather than mathematics.

Research Publications: Google Scholar

Selected Publications

Jon Barry, David Maxwell, Simon Jennings, David Walker and Joanna Murray (2017) Emon: an R-package to support the design of marine ecological and environmental studies and monitoring programmes. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 8, 1342-1346, DOI 10.1111/2041-210X.12748

Barry J, Eggleton J, Ware S and Curtis M (2015) Generalizing Visual Fast Count Estimators for Underwater Video Surveys. Ecosphere. http://www.esajournals.org/doi/full/10.1890/ES15-00093.1

Jon Barry, Silvana Birchenough, Beth Norris and Suzanne Ware (2013) On the Use of Sample Biodiversity Indices to Reflect Changes in Benthic Fauna Biodiversity. Ecological Indicators. 26, 154–162.

Contact Details:

jon.barry@cefas.co.uk