Environmental Internship Program - 2019 Booklet

BIODIVERSITY AND
CONSERVATION
Al Liang ’21
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Certificate: Entrepreneurship
PROJECT TITLE
Using Biogeochemical
Information to Better
Understand Biogeography
of Southern Ocean
Fisheries
ORGANIZATION(S)
Program in Atmospheric
and Oceanic Sciences,
Princeton University
LOCATION(S)
Princeton, New Jersey
MENTOR(S)
Jorge Sarmiento,
George J. Magee
Professor of Geoscience
and Geological
Engineering, Emeritus,
Professor of Geosciences,
Emeritus; Lionel Arteaga,
Associate Research
Scholar, Atmospheric and
Oceanic Sciences;
Kisei Tanaka,
Postdoctoral Research
Associate, Atmospheric
and Oceanic Sciences
I used Southern Ocean State Estimate
biogeochemical data and machine learning
methods to determine whether biogeochemical
data is significant in modeling Antarctic
krill distribution. I also investigated the
environmental factors that are most critical in
predicting krill distribution. I used the machine
learning techniques of random forest and
boosted regression trees and found that both
methods reinforced my findings. During my
research, I learned to code in R, a valuable skill
for data analysis that I will certainly use in the
future. I also created machine learning models
and used them to make observations about
big data. This internship really increased my
interest in using machine learning methods to
analyze data, something I didn’t have previous
experience doing. I'm looking forward to
continuing my research on this topic and seeing
what else I can uncover.
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