ONLINE COURSE – Advanced Ecological Niche Modelling (ENM/SDM) Using R (ANMR02) Deadline to register 28th August

Have you built an Ecological Niche Model? If yes, you have already encountered challenges on data preparation, or have struggled with issues in models fitting and accuracy. This course will teach you how to overcome these challenges and improve the accuracy of your ecological niche models. By the end of 5-day practical course, you will have the capacity to filter records and select your variables with variance inflation factor; to test effect of Maxent regularization parameter in models performance; to validate models performance and accuracy; to perform MESS analysis, null models, and mechanistic models, as well as to build your “virtual species”.

Ecological niche, species distribution, habitat distribution, or climatic envelope models are different names for mechanistic and correlative models, which are empirical or mathematical approaches to the ecological niche of a species. These methods relate different types of ecogeographical variables (environmental, topographical, human) to species physiological data or geographical locations, in order to identify the factors limiting and defining the species' niche. ENMs have become popular because of their efficiency in the design and implementation of conservation management.

By the end of 5-day practical course you will have the capacity to

1. filter records and select your variables with variance inflation factor;
2. test the effect of Maxent regularization parameter in models performance;
3. validate models performance and accuracy;
4. perform MESS analysis, null models, and mechanistic models, as well as to build your “virtual species”.

Students will learn to use functions implemented in the packages “usdm”; “dismo”; “ENMEval”; “SDMvspecies”; “spThin”; and “NicheMapper” among others.