Hierarchical models for abundance, distribution and species

Currently listed training opportunities (short courses, workshops, meetings...) -- software neutral.

Hierarchical models for abundance, distribution and species

Postby cooch » Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:43 am

Workshop: Hierarchical models for abundance, distribution
and species richness in spatially structured populations using
unmarked/R and WinBUGS


Instructors: Marc Kéry, Richard Chandler, Andy Royle;
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center & Swiss Ornithological Institute

Date: 2–5 April 2012

Venue: USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, Maryland

Computers: Bring your own laptop with latest R/unmarked and WinBUGS/OpenBUGS/JAGS

Course fee: USD$700 (normal rate), USD$300 (student rate), 2 wild cards available.

The analysis of abundance, distribution, species richness, and of the dynamic rates governing their change, lies at the core of ecology and its applications such as conservation, wildlife management and monitoring science. Metapopulation designs, where repeated measurements of some quantity such as detection/nondetection or counts are made at a collection of sites, underlie a vast number of studies in ecology and management. Inference about such data is conveniently based on hierarchical models, where one submodel describes the underlying true state of the process (e.g., presence or absence at a site) and another submodel describes the observation process that connects the true state to the observations.

In recent years, much progress has been made in the development of methods and computer algorithms to fit hierarchical models. In particular, Bayesian statistical analysis and the general-purpose Bayesian software package WinBUGS have opened up entirely new possibilities for ecologists to conduct complex population analyses. On the other hand, the new R package unmarked contains a wealth of functions to analyse
hierarchical models in a frequentist mode of inference.

This course introduces key hierarchical models used in the analysis of distribution, abundance and species
richness, as well as their spatial and temporal patterns, and provides both Bayesian and the frequentist methods for their analysis. We use package unmarked in R as well as WinBUGS to fit and understand some of the most widely used models for the analysis of animal and plant populations. These include:

- site-occupancy models (MacKenzie et al. 2002, 2003) for the analysis of species distributions,
- MAXLIKE models for likelihood-based inference about species distributions using presence-only data
(Royle et al., in press),
- binomial (Royle 2004) and multinomial mixture models (e.g., removal, double-observer) for the
analysis of distribution and abundance,
- distance sampling models,
- dynamic models of distribution (MacKenzie et al. 2003) and abundance (Royle & Dorazio 2008; Dail
& Madsen 2011)
- multi-species site-occupancy models for inference about communities, e.g., species richness (Dorazio
& Royle 2005; Dorazio et al. 2006)

This is an intermediate-level workshop with about 80% spent lecturing and 20% on solving exercises. A
working knowledge of modern regression methods (GLMs, mixed models) and preferentially of program R or another programming language is required. No previous experience with program WinBUGS is assumed;
however, it is beneficial.

Please bring your own laptops and install a recent version of R, with the latest version of package unmarked, plus WinBUGS 1.4., with the upgrade patch and the immortality key decoded (in this order). Alternatively, OpenBUGS and JAGS should work for most of what we do.

Send your application to Andy Royle (hmecology@gmail.com), describing your background and knowledge in statistical modeling, R and WinBUGS, by 31 January 2012 at the latest.
cooch
 
Posts: 1628
Joined: Thu May 15, 2003 4:11 pm
Location: Cornell University

Return to Training, Workshops & Meetings

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 55 guests