Workshops
We’re pleased to offer the following high-quality half-day workshops for the 2026 IALE-North American Annual Meeting. Thank you to the workshop organizers for their efforts to provide these additional educational opportunities with an emphasis on a specific skill, technique, or process.
W-01: Ecosystem Services Mapping with InVEST and GIS
Overview: Ecosystem services provide a critical link between ecological processes and human well-being, yet quantifying and mapping these services across landscapes can be challenging. This workshop introduces participants to the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) modeling suite, a widely used, open-source toolset developed by the Natural Capital Project for mapping and valuing ecosystem services and assessing tradeoffs among services.
The session will provide a hands-on introduction to core InVEST models relevant to landscape ecology, with a particular focus on water-related services, sediment retention, carbon storage, and habitat quality. Participants will learn how to prepare input datasets (e.g., land cover, climate, soil, and topography, etc.) from the best sources for the U.S and globally, and how to process outputs to generate meaningful maps and statistics in the GIS environment. We will also explore best practices for data sourcing, model calibration, and interpretation of results across scales, from watershed to continental levels.
Beyond technical steps, the workshop will highlight approaches for identifying hotspots of ecosystem services, analyzing trade-offs and synergies among services, and communicating results to support landscape management and policy decisions. Emphasis will be placed on integrating InVEST outputs with spatial analysis workflows to produce transparent, reproducible, and decision-relevant products.
By the end of the workshop, participants will have gained practical experience running InVEST models, interpreting outputs, and linking results to managment policies and applied ecological questions. Participants will leave with sample datasets, tutorial scripts, and resources to continue exploring ecosystem service modeling in their own research and professional contexts. No prior experience with InVEST is required, though familiarity with GIS is recommended.
Intended Audience: This workshop is designed for graduate students, early-career researchers, and professionals in ecology, geography, environmental science, natural resource management, and related fields who are interested in quantifying and mapping ecosystem services. The material is suitable for beginner to intermediate users: no prior experience with InVEST is required, though basic familiarity with GIS software is recommended.
Presenter(s): Hazhir Karimi; Ph.D. Candidate (graduated in April 2025), Department of Geography & Environment, The University of Alabama
W-02: MultiScaleR: Approachable and Generalizable Multiscale Ecological Modeling in R
Overview: A central challenge in ecology is understanding how species respond to their environment across different spatial scales. Identifying the correct "scale of effect" is crucial for accurate models of species distributions, population dynamics, and movement, but has historically been hindered by methodological complexity and computational limitations. This workshop introduces a solution through the new multiScaleR package, providing an accessible and generalizable workflow for multiscale ecological modeling. We will begin with a concise theoretical foundation to contextualize multiscale analysis. Participants will then be guided through the core functionality of multiScaleR, learning a practical workflow for estimating scales of effect. The package is designed for flexibility, integrating seamlessly with common modeling frameworks including generalized linear models, zero-inflated models, and specialized packages like unmarked, spaMM, and glmmTMB. Through hands-on examples and provided code, we will explore the package's capabilities while emphasizing practical applications and important limitations. A significant portion of the workshop will be dedicated to an open work session, where attendees are strongly encouraged to apply multiScaleR to their own data. The instructors will be available to provide direct support and help jumpstart analyses. This workshop will equip spatial ecologists with a powerful and approachable tool to advance their research by explicitly incorporating scale into their investigative toolbox.
Intended Audience: This workshop welcomes students and professionals at all stages. To ensure participants get the most from the session, a basic understanding of R coding is strongly recommended. While beginners are welcome, familiarity with R will be essential for following the hands-on examples and applying the concepts effectively.
Presenter(s): Dr. Bill Peterman, The Ohio State University; Dr. Joseph Drake, The Ohio State University
W-03: AI-Powered Analysis of Animal Space Use, Movement, and Connectivity with SpatChat
Overview: This workshop introduces SpatChat, the next-generation conversational AI platform for running spatial analyses directly from natural-language prompts. No coding or installs required. It dramatically accelerates workflows, completing analyses in seconds that used to take much longer, and boosts productivity without sacrificing rigor or reproducibility.
Participants will learn how to:
1) Analyze movement patterns using displacement distances, step lengths, turning angles, and autocorrelation diagnostics, and identify behavioral states with hidden Markov models.
2) Estimate home ranges with multiple methods, including MCP, KDE, LoCoH, and dBBMM.
3) Conduct species–habitat association analyses using resource-selection and step-selection functions.
4) Model connectivity using least-cost paths, resistant kernels, circuit-theory, etc.
By the end, participants will be able to analyze real movement datasets, including those sourced from Movebank, with the techniques they learned and produce publication-ready outputs.
SpatChat turns plain-language prompts into robust analyses and interactive maps, letting participants focus on scientific reasoning rather than software mechanics.
Intended Audience: Any level. Basic GIS and spatial concepts will be helpful. No coding background required.
Presenter(s): Ho Yi Wan, University of Florida; Logan Hysen, Michigan State University
W-04: Metacoupling and Telecoupling: Using Interdisciplinary Frameworks to Connect Landscapes Across Scales
Overview: Current global sustainability challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and landscape fragmentation, are increasingly influenced by local and distant forces. Factors including disasters, globalization, environmental changes, social unrest, war, and many others connect landscapes worldwide. These interconnections are made possible through various processes, including animal and human migration, species invasion, disease spread, sound/noise transmission, trade, flows of ecosystem services, hydrological flows, foreign investment, technology transfer, water transfer, and tourism. These forces, factors, and processes together form metacoupling -- human-nature interactions within a system (such as a landscape; intracoupling) and across adjacent systems (pericoupling) and distant systems (telecoupling). Metacouplings have profound implications for sustainability and resiliency as they can transform landscape structure, function, pattern, process, and dynamics. For example, farmers convert forest landscapes for food production to meet demands from local populations and those in adjacent and distant places. To help integrate and understand various interconnections and feedbacks comprehensively and systematically, the metacoupling and telecoupling frameworks have been developed. These frameworks have been used to address human-environment challenges across scales and systems. In this workshop, we will introduce the frameworks, present their applications, conduct hands-on exercises to apply the frameworks to various case studies, and highlight tools to quantitatively assess interactions within and between systems worldwide.
Intended Audience: The target audience encompasses attendees at any career stage (e.g. students, postdoctoral scholars, professors, resource managers) and with a variety of interests, such as landscape ecology, landscape architecture, landscape change, disasters and hazards, climate change, natural resource policy and governance, biodiversity, and landscape patterns (e.g. connectivity) and processes (e.g. disturbance, dispersal, migration).
Presenter(s): Jianguo (Jack) Liu, Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University; Nick Manning, Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University; Logan Hysen, Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University; Cori Sharp, Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University; Nan Jia, Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University, and Department of Landscape Architecture, School of Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
W-05: Lidar for Forestry, Ecology, and Natural Resources in R: A primer
Overview: Learn how to turn aerial lidar data into meaningful forest insights using R. This hands-on workshop covers the basics of point clouds, elevation products, tree mapping, and scalable analysis—an accessible entry point to lidar for students, researchers, and professionals in natural resources.
"Lidar for Forestry, Ecology, and Natural Resources in R: A primer" is a hands-on, beginner-friendly workshop designed to introduce students, professionals, and researchers to working with lidar data in R. Participants will learn to acquire, load, and visualize lidar point clouds; create raster products such as canopy height models; and map individual trees and crowns using aerial data. The workshop also explores how to use lidar-derived data to ask ecological questions, and introduces techniques for handling large datasets efficiently, including data reduction and parallel processing using the LAScatalog framework. In addition to technical skills, participants will gain insight into how lidar fits within broader natural resource workflows, such as forest inventory. By the end of the session, participants will have a foundational workflow they can apply to real-world forest and natural resource applications.
The workshop includes a brief introductory lecture, followed by a hands-on learning experience. Participants will work through seven introductory lidar modules with the instructor, where they will participate in hands-on coding, data analysis, and work in groups. Participants will discuss their own interests and can optionally incorporate their own data into the modules.
Participants must bring a laptop (Windows preferred for compatibility with certain lidar tools). Prior to the workshop, please ensure that the following software is installed and working:
•R (latest version)
•RStudio (latest version)
•Required R packages: lidR, terra, and sf (pre-installation is strongly recommended)
A basic understanding of R, RStudio, how to install and load packages, and basic R commands is assumed.
Intended Audience: This workshop is an entry point for students, researchers, and professionals in natural resources and ecology into lidar analysis. A basic understanding of R, RStudio, how to install and load packages, and basic R commands is assumed, and installation of software may be required
Presenter(s): Jeffery Cannon, Landscape Ecologist, The Jones Center at Ichauway, Newton, GA.; Leah Andino, Research Associate, The Jones Center at Ichauway, Newton, GA.
W-06: Popular Science Writing for Beginners - Conceptualizing, Writing, and Pitching for Popular Media
Overview: Ecological knowledge is being rapidly produced, and yet it is written in ways that are catered towards an academic audience. This makes scientific knowledge inaccessible to the broader public as well as important stakeholders who have the capacity to influence policy and conservation. In today’s era, where information is consumed quickly, it is often necessary for the scientific community to communicate their work through clear, easy language and form with mass appeal, such as magazine articles, storybooks, podcasts, vlogs, and more. In this workshop led by an ecologist/writer, participants will be guided on how to write for a popular audience through a presentation and activities on writing about nature, developing a pitch, a short writing session, and group feedback.
This workshop is aimed towards students and scientists interested in science communication, as well as beginner writers interested in popular writing about science and nature, wishing to foray into publishing their work. Participants should leave the workshop confident enough to begin writing, pitching, and publishing short-form articles or other media based on their research, to share with a wide audience.
Intended Audience: All (students and professionals)
Presenter(s): Bhavya Iyer, University of Georgia; Sutirtha Lahiri, University of Minnesota
Overview: Ecosystem services provide a critical link between ecological processes and human well-being, yet quantifying and mapping these services across landscapes can be challenging. This workshop introduces participants to the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) modeling suite, a widely used, open-source toolset developed by the Natural Capital Project for mapping and valuing ecosystem services and assessing tradeoffs among services.
The session will provide a hands-on introduction to core InVEST models relevant to landscape ecology, with a particular focus on water-related services, sediment retention, carbon storage, and habitat quality. Participants will learn how to prepare input datasets (e.g., land cover, climate, soil, and topography, etc.) from the best sources for the U.S and globally, and how to process outputs to generate meaningful maps and statistics in the GIS environment. We will also explore best practices for data sourcing, model calibration, and interpretation of results across scales, from watershed to continental levels.
Beyond technical steps, the workshop will highlight approaches for identifying hotspots of ecosystem services, analyzing trade-offs and synergies among services, and communicating results to support landscape management and policy decisions. Emphasis will be placed on integrating InVEST outputs with spatial analysis workflows to produce transparent, reproducible, and decision-relevant products.
By the end of the workshop, participants will have gained practical experience running InVEST models, interpreting outputs, and linking results to managment policies and applied ecological questions. Participants will leave with sample datasets, tutorial scripts, and resources to continue exploring ecosystem service modeling in their own research and professional contexts. No prior experience with InVEST is required, though familiarity with GIS is recommended.
Intended Audience: This workshop is designed for graduate students, early-career researchers, and professionals in ecology, geography, environmental science, natural resource management, and related fields who are interested in quantifying and mapping ecosystem services. The material is suitable for beginner to intermediate users: no prior experience with InVEST is required, though basic familiarity with GIS software is recommended.
Presenter(s): Hazhir Karimi; Ph.D. Candidate (graduated in April 2025), Department of Geography & Environment, The University of Alabama
W-02: MultiScaleR: Approachable and Generalizable Multiscale Ecological Modeling in R
Overview: A central challenge in ecology is understanding how species respond to their environment across different spatial scales. Identifying the correct "scale of effect" is crucial for accurate models of species distributions, population dynamics, and movement, but has historically been hindered by methodological complexity and computational limitations. This workshop introduces a solution through the new multiScaleR package, providing an accessible and generalizable workflow for multiscale ecological modeling. We will begin with a concise theoretical foundation to contextualize multiscale analysis. Participants will then be guided through the core functionality of multiScaleR, learning a practical workflow for estimating scales of effect. The package is designed for flexibility, integrating seamlessly with common modeling frameworks including generalized linear models, zero-inflated models, and specialized packages like unmarked, spaMM, and glmmTMB. Through hands-on examples and provided code, we will explore the package's capabilities while emphasizing practical applications and important limitations. A significant portion of the workshop will be dedicated to an open work session, where attendees are strongly encouraged to apply multiScaleR to their own data. The instructors will be available to provide direct support and help jumpstart analyses. This workshop will equip spatial ecologists with a powerful and approachable tool to advance their research by explicitly incorporating scale into their investigative toolbox.
Intended Audience: This workshop welcomes students and professionals at all stages. To ensure participants get the most from the session, a basic understanding of R coding is strongly recommended. While beginners are welcome, familiarity with R will be essential for following the hands-on examples and applying the concepts effectively.
Presenter(s): Dr. Bill Peterman, The Ohio State University; Dr. Joseph Drake, The Ohio State University
W-03: AI-Powered Analysis of Animal Space Use, Movement, and Connectivity with SpatChat
Overview: This workshop introduces SpatChat, the next-generation conversational AI platform for running spatial analyses directly from natural-language prompts. No coding or installs required. It dramatically accelerates workflows, completing analyses in seconds that used to take much longer, and boosts productivity without sacrificing rigor or reproducibility.
Participants will learn how to:
1) Analyze movement patterns using displacement distances, step lengths, turning angles, and autocorrelation diagnostics, and identify behavioral states with hidden Markov models.
2) Estimate home ranges with multiple methods, including MCP, KDE, LoCoH, and dBBMM.
3) Conduct species–habitat association analyses using resource-selection and step-selection functions.
4) Model connectivity using least-cost paths, resistant kernels, circuit-theory, etc.
By the end, participants will be able to analyze real movement datasets, including those sourced from Movebank, with the techniques they learned and produce publication-ready outputs.
SpatChat turns plain-language prompts into robust analyses and interactive maps, letting participants focus on scientific reasoning rather than software mechanics.
Intended Audience: Any level. Basic GIS and spatial concepts will be helpful. No coding background required.
Presenter(s): Ho Yi Wan, University of Florida; Logan Hysen, Michigan State University
W-04: Metacoupling and Telecoupling: Using Interdisciplinary Frameworks to Connect Landscapes Across Scales
Overview: Current global sustainability challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and landscape fragmentation, are increasingly influenced by local and distant forces. Factors including disasters, globalization, environmental changes, social unrest, war, and many others connect landscapes worldwide. These interconnections are made possible through various processes, including animal and human migration, species invasion, disease spread, sound/noise transmission, trade, flows of ecosystem services, hydrological flows, foreign investment, technology transfer, water transfer, and tourism. These forces, factors, and processes together form metacoupling -- human-nature interactions within a system (such as a landscape; intracoupling) and across adjacent systems (pericoupling) and distant systems (telecoupling). Metacouplings have profound implications for sustainability and resiliency as they can transform landscape structure, function, pattern, process, and dynamics. For example, farmers convert forest landscapes for food production to meet demands from local populations and those in adjacent and distant places. To help integrate and understand various interconnections and feedbacks comprehensively and systematically, the metacoupling and telecoupling frameworks have been developed. These frameworks have been used to address human-environment challenges across scales and systems. In this workshop, we will introduce the frameworks, present their applications, conduct hands-on exercises to apply the frameworks to various case studies, and highlight tools to quantitatively assess interactions within and between systems worldwide.
Intended Audience: The target audience encompasses attendees at any career stage (e.g. students, postdoctoral scholars, professors, resource managers) and with a variety of interests, such as landscape ecology, landscape architecture, landscape change, disasters and hazards, climate change, natural resource policy and governance, biodiversity, and landscape patterns (e.g. connectivity) and processes (e.g. disturbance, dispersal, migration).
Presenter(s): Jianguo (Jack) Liu, Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University; Nick Manning, Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University; Logan Hysen, Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University; Cori Sharp, Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University; Nan Jia, Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University, and Department of Landscape Architecture, School of Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
W-05: Lidar for Forestry, Ecology, and Natural Resources in R: A primer
Overview: Learn how to turn aerial lidar data into meaningful forest insights using R. This hands-on workshop covers the basics of point clouds, elevation products, tree mapping, and scalable analysis—an accessible entry point to lidar for students, researchers, and professionals in natural resources.
"Lidar for Forestry, Ecology, and Natural Resources in R: A primer" is a hands-on, beginner-friendly workshop designed to introduce students, professionals, and researchers to working with lidar data in R. Participants will learn to acquire, load, and visualize lidar point clouds; create raster products such as canopy height models; and map individual trees and crowns using aerial data. The workshop also explores how to use lidar-derived data to ask ecological questions, and introduces techniques for handling large datasets efficiently, including data reduction and parallel processing using the LAScatalog framework. In addition to technical skills, participants will gain insight into how lidar fits within broader natural resource workflows, such as forest inventory. By the end of the session, participants will have a foundational workflow they can apply to real-world forest and natural resource applications.
The workshop includes a brief introductory lecture, followed by a hands-on learning experience. Participants will work through seven introductory lidar modules with the instructor, where they will participate in hands-on coding, data analysis, and work in groups. Participants will discuss their own interests and can optionally incorporate their own data into the modules.
Participants must bring a laptop (Windows preferred for compatibility with certain lidar tools). Prior to the workshop, please ensure that the following software is installed and working:
•R (latest version)
•RStudio (latest version)
•Required R packages: lidR, terra, and sf (pre-installation is strongly recommended)
A basic understanding of R, RStudio, how to install and load packages, and basic R commands is assumed.
Intended Audience: This workshop is an entry point for students, researchers, and professionals in natural resources and ecology into lidar analysis. A basic understanding of R, RStudio, how to install and load packages, and basic R commands is assumed, and installation of software may be required
Presenter(s): Jeffery Cannon, Landscape Ecologist, The Jones Center at Ichauway, Newton, GA.; Leah Andino, Research Associate, The Jones Center at Ichauway, Newton, GA.
W-06: Popular Science Writing for Beginners - Conceptualizing, Writing, and Pitching for Popular Media
Overview: Ecological knowledge is being rapidly produced, and yet it is written in ways that are catered towards an academic audience. This makes scientific knowledge inaccessible to the broader public as well as important stakeholders who have the capacity to influence policy and conservation. In today’s era, where information is consumed quickly, it is often necessary for the scientific community to communicate their work through clear, easy language and form with mass appeal, such as magazine articles, storybooks, podcasts, vlogs, and more. In this workshop led by an ecologist/writer, participants will be guided on how to write for a popular audience through a presentation and activities on writing about nature, developing a pitch, a short writing session, and group feedback.
This workshop is aimed towards students and scientists interested in science communication, as well as beginner writers interested in popular writing about science and nature, wishing to foray into publishing their work. Participants should leave the workshop confident enough to begin writing, pitching, and publishing short-form articles or other media based on their research, to share with a wide audience.
Intended Audience: All (students and professionals)
Presenter(s): Bhavya Iyer, University of Georgia; Sutirtha Lahiri, University of Minnesota