The course took place 9-13 January 2017 at the University of Kent and was run by SE@K’s Diana, Eleni, and Rachel and DICE’s Richard Griffiths with the help of SE@K PhD students Alex, Anita, Marina and Ming.
30 participants traveled from all around the UK for the course which involved lectures, R practicals, talks by Humphrey Crick from Natural England and Rufus Howard from IEMA, round table discussions on ecological challenges and the role of statistical modeling in dealing with some of these challenges and 1-1 sessions with the course organisers for all participants who wanted to discuss their studies and data.
On Tuesday Richard kicked off the day by discussing the types of population data that we need in conservation practice. Humphrey then went on to discuss problems in modern conservation and the role of statistical modeling. Finally Rufus Howard talked about Big Data (Gaps) in EIA. A round table discussion then focused on obstacles to incorporating statistical models and priorities of ecologists.
The rest of the week focused on statistical methods used in statistical ecology including abundance estimation, capture-recapture, occupancy modeling, distance sampling, citizen science data, modeling movement, species interaction models, spatial models and integrated modeling.
The course was successful at introducing complex statistical ideas, exposing participants to a wide range of statistical techniques and discussing state-of-the-art statistical methods.