Introduction & Advanced Occupancy Modeling In-Person/Virtual

[jkennelly]

Join Center for Wildlife Studies in-person OR virtually for our upcoming courses;
Introduction (March 11-15) and Advanced (March 18-22) Occupancy Modeling be held at the University of Maine in 2024.

Both classes will meet Monday through Thursday, 8:30 AM-5PM, with an 1.5-hr break at noon. On Fridays, Dr. MacKenzie will meet with individuals or groups to discuss course materials or projects from school or work.

Participants will have access to all course materials in Canvas, CWS’s learning management system. All materials, including live lectures, will be available to all participants for a 2-week period following the course. Participants enrolled in both courses will have access to the Intro course for 3 weeks following the course to make up for the week they will attend the advanced course.

INTRODUCTION TO OCCUPANCY MODELING

Species presence/absence is a fundamental concept used in many areas of ecology (e.g., species distributions, habitat modeling, monitoring, and metapopulation studies), but imperfect detection can lead to false absences. Not accounting for false absences can lead to misleading inferences about patterns and dynamics of species occurrence and the factors that influence them. We will learn methods for accounting for imperfect detection with species detection/non-detection data and also discuss important study design considerations. All exercises will be conducted in R, covering data analysis and presentation of results (plotting results, creating maps, etc.).

PREREQUISITES
-This course is for those with no, or little, experience with occupancy modeling, but more experienced users may also benefit from attending.
-Basic data tidying and manipulation tasks in R (e.g., R Boot Camp).
-Familiarity with regression, logistic regression, or generalized linear modeling in R is advantageous (e.g., Ecological Statistics and Modeling & Generalized Models).

ADVANCED OCCUPANCY MODELING

This course is aimed at participants that have completed Introductory to Occupancy Modeling or have suitable practical experience implementing species occurrence models that account for imperfect detection. In this course, learn the underlying theory of multi-scale, multi-state, species co-occurrence, and community level models and then put your new knowledge into practice. All hands-on exercises will be conducted in R, covering data analysis and presentation of results (plotting results, creating maps, etc.).

PREREQUISITES
-Introduction to Occupancy Modeling or experience in RPresence
-Experienced in statistics and modeling in R (e.g., Ecological Statistics and Modeling & Generalized Models).
-Experience with JAGS for fitting models using Bayesian methods in R is advantageous (e.g., Bayesian Statistics in Ecology)

Join us in-person OR virtually. For more information / to register, please visit: https://www.centerforwildlifestudies.or ... g-inperson

Reach out to info@centerforwildlifestudies.org with any additional questions