Species Distribution Models (SDMs) play a critical role in biodiversity, conservation, and understanding the potential impacts to ecosystems under changing climate conditions. SDMs contextualize future scenarios based on known or projected ecological parameters and are the cornerstone for adaptive management planning around short- and long-term changes to complex landscapes. This training will provide an overview of SDMs, show how to use remote sensing data for landscape characterization, and highlight multiple Applied Sciences projects that have developed tools for conducting SDM for a variety of ecosystems. This will include a special session on the Wallace R-based platform for modeling of species niches and distributions. Attendees will be provided with demonstrations and additional resources for using these tools for their own species modeling applications.
Course Dates: August 12, 17, and 19, 2021
Course Format: Three, 1.5 hour parts
Time: 12:00-13:30 EDT (UTC-4)
Relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals:
Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
Goal 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
Target 15.5: Take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species