2020 ARCHIVES: Workshops
The following workshops will be offered at the 2020 IALE-North America Virtual Meeting. Please note: pre-registration is required for all workshops. Details about how to connect to the workshops will be provided to registrants.
HALF-DAY CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS - THURSDAY, MAY 14
Introduction to Landscape Ecology with R (9:00am - 1:00pm)
Presenters: Jakub Nowosad, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland; Maximilian H.K. Hesselbarth, University of Goettigen, Goettingen, Germany
Overview: R is a free, open-source programming language created as an environment for statistical computing and visualization. The advantages of using R include its flexibility, ease of collaboration, and focus on reproducibility. Additionally, the concept of packages - collections of R functions, data, and compiled code created by users - allowed for the growth of its capabilities and expansion into many scientific fields. In recent years, R also has become one of the most often used tools in ecology.
R also has a long history of supporting spatial data analysis, including spatial data downloading, preprocessing, visualizing, and modeling. Recently, however, some new packages have appeared which have significantly changed the work with spatial data in R; in particular, the sf package.
The workshop will be divided into two parts. The first one will introduce participants to the spatial data analysis system in R. The focus will be on getting started, with demonstrations of key packages, spatial analysis, and making maps. The second part of the workshop will focus on how to use the landscapemetrics package. This package is based on the main concepts from FRAGSTATS, but it is characterized by a number of advantages. These include, among others, removing existing metric implementation errors, adding new landscape metrics, enabling landscape visualization, and allowing for calculations on large input data. A particular advantage is also an ability to integrate this package with other packages for spatial analysis, so it is possible to download spatial data, process it, calculate landscape metrics and visualize them within one tool.
The workshop will be a mixture of theoretical and practical. Pointers to further materials will ensure that participants know where to get help and how to take confident next steps after the workshop.
Intended Audience: The workshop is designed for R beginners who have prior experience with geographic data or intermediate R users interested in spatial data analysis.
This workshop is BYOD: bring your own device
Introduction to SyncroSim and ST-Sim (1:30pm - 5:30pm)
Presenters: Colin Daniel, ApexRMS
Overview: SyncroSim (www.syncrosim.com) is a free software platform designed to streamline data management tasks associated with ecological forecasting, in order to facilitate scenario and uncertainty analyses. SyncroSim allows modelers to develop “packages” to bundle and share collections of linked GitHub-based model scripts. One such package has been developed for a model called ST-Sim (www.stsim.net). ST-Sim uses a state-and-transition simulation model approach to forecast landscape dynamics, including projecting changes in both vegetation and land use; it has been applied to a wide range of landscapes and management questions, including forests, rangelands, grasslands, wetlands, aquatic communities, and land use/land cover. This half day workshop will introduce developing and running spatially-explicit models of landscape change using the open-source ST-Sim package within SyncroSim. The workshop will cover state-and-transition simulation modeling concepts, how to use ST-Sim to create simple models of landscape change, incorporating uncertainty in inputs when making projections, running models and interpreting results. The workshop will also introduce developing custom packages in SyncroSim, including packages to extend the core functionality of ST-Sim. While no particular software knowledge or disciplinary expertise is required, the workshop will provide some examples using the rsyncrosim R package, which provides access to SyncroSim and ST-Sim from the R programming language.
Intended Audience: Students and professionals
This workshop is BYOD: bring your own device
Presenters: Colin Daniel, ApexRMS
Overview: SyncroSim (www.syncrosim.com) is a free software platform designed to streamline data management tasks associated with ecological forecasting, in order to facilitate scenario and uncertainty analyses. SyncroSim allows modelers to develop “packages” to bundle and share collections of linked GitHub-based model scripts. One such package has been developed for a model called ST-Sim (www.stsim.net). ST-Sim uses a state-and-transition simulation model approach to forecast landscape dynamics, including projecting changes in both vegetation and land use; it has been applied to a wide range of landscapes and management questions, including forests, rangelands, grasslands, wetlands, aquatic communities, and land use/land cover. This half day workshop will introduce developing and running spatially-explicit models of landscape change using the open-source ST-Sim package within SyncroSim. The workshop will cover state-and-transition simulation modeling concepts, how to use ST-Sim to create simple models of landscape change, incorporating uncertainty in inputs when making projections, running models and interpreting results. The workshop will also introduce developing custom packages in SyncroSim, including packages to extend the core functionality of ST-Sim. While no particular software knowledge or disciplinary expertise is required, the workshop will provide some examples using the rsyncrosim R package, which provides access to SyncroSim and ST-Sim from the R programming language.
Intended Audience: Students and professionals
This workshop is BYOD: bring your own device
Introduction to Using Google Earth Engine for Landscape Ecology (1:30pm - 5:30pm)
Presenters: Jeffrey A. Cardille, McGill University; Morgan Crowley, PhD Student, McGill University
Overview: This hands-on workshop is targeted at beginning users of Google Earth Engine. We will introduce participants to the platform with a focus on giving attendees the skills to begin using it in landscape ecology studies. We’ve recently taught several one-day sessions using the Google-developed curriculum, so we have experience with the curriculum and we can flexibly address a wide range of incoming experience levels. We'll teach the basics of operating EE, leaving participants with a curated list of next steps depending on their needs and experience level. In addition to teaching individuals how to use EE, we hope to establish an Earth Engine / landscape ecology working group that will share challenges and successes in working with EE tools for landscape ecology. The co-convenors attended the 2019 Geo For Good symposium that presented a wide range of existing and upcoming features within this powerful tool, so we can also speak to the future development of landscape ecology tools within EE.
Intended Audience: This is intended principally for novice users of Google Earth Engine. It will give participants a way to dip their toe into the Earth Engine waters and give them a path forward at the end of the session.
This workshop is BYOD: bring your own device
Presenters: Jeffrey A. Cardille, McGill University; Morgan Crowley, PhD Student, McGill University
Overview: This hands-on workshop is targeted at beginning users of Google Earth Engine. We will introduce participants to the platform with a focus on giving attendees the skills to begin using it in landscape ecology studies. We’ve recently taught several one-day sessions using the Google-developed curriculum, so we have experience with the curriculum and we can flexibly address a wide range of incoming experience levels. We'll teach the basics of operating EE, leaving participants with a curated list of next steps depending on their needs and experience level. In addition to teaching individuals how to use EE, we hope to establish an Earth Engine / landscape ecology working group that will share challenges and successes in working with EE tools for landscape ecology. The co-convenors attended the 2019 Geo For Good symposium that presented a wide range of existing and upcoming features within this powerful tool, so we can also speak to the future development of landscape ecology tools within EE.
Intended Audience: This is intended principally for novice users of Google Earth Engine. It will give participants a way to dip their toe into the Earth Engine waters and give them a path forward at the end of the session.
This workshop is BYOD: bring your own device
Optimizing Landscape Resistance Surfaces Using ResistanceGA (1:30pm - 5:30pm)
Presenters: William Peterman, School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University
Overview: Understanding how landscape features affect gene flow has implications for numerous fields including conservation biology, epidemiology, and evolutionary and molecular ecology. Despite this importance, objective quantification and assessment of landscape resistance has remained a significant challenge. From its inception, an allure of landscape genetics has been the potential to use spatial genetic data to determine how landscape features affect gene flow. However, landscape genetics has struggled to identify a rigorous and coherent framework for conducting landscape resistance analyses. Most current approaches for optimizing landscape resistance values rely on some combination of expert opinion, a limited search of parameter space, or advanced coding skills. The R package ResistanceGA overcomes many of the challenges faced by researchers seeking to determine how landscape features affect movement and gene flow. ResistanceGA provides user-friendly functions for optimizing landscape resistance surfaces using pairwise genetic data, as well as a coherent framework for conducting model selection.
This half day workshop will provide a brief overview of landscape resistance modeling in the context of landscape genetics, followed by detailed coverage of how to use ResistanceGA to optimize landscape resistance surfaces.
Workshop attendees will get extensive hands-on experience using ResistanceGA functions, conducting analyses, and interpreting results. To get the most out of this workshop, attendees should have a working knowledge of R.
Intended Audience: Geared toward anyone interested in landscape genetic analyses. Attendees will get the most out of the workshop with an INTERMEDIATE familiarity with R.
This workshop is BYOD: bring your own device
Presenters: William Peterman, School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University
Overview: Understanding how landscape features affect gene flow has implications for numerous fields including conservation biology, epidemiology, and evolutionary and molecular ecology. Despite this importance, objective quantification and assessment of landscape resistance has remained a significant challenge. From its inception, an allure of landscape genetics has been the potential to use spatial genetic data to determine how landscape features affect gene flow. However, landscape genetics has struggled to identify a rigorous and coherent framework for conducting landscape resistance analyses. Most current approaches for optimizing landscape resistance values rely on some combination of expert opinion, a limited search of parameter space, or advanced coding skills. The R package ResistanceGA overcomes many of the challenges faced by researchers seeking to determine how landscape features affect movement and gene flow. ResistanceGA provides user-friendly functions for optimizing landscape resistance surfaces using pairwise genetic data, as well as a coherent framework for conducting model selection.
This half day workshop will provide a brief overview of landscape resistance modeling in the context of landscape genetics, followed by detailed coverage of how to use ResistanceGA to optimize landscape resistance surfaces.
Workshop attendees will get extensive hands-on experience using ResistanceGA functions, conducting analyses, and interpreting results. To get the most out of this workshop, attendees should have a working knowledge of R.
Intended Audience: Geared toward anyone interested in landscape genetic analyses. Attendees will get the most out of the workshop with an INTERMEDIATE familiarity with R.
This workshop is BYOD: bring your own device
