EEB 713, Spring 2019

Walter Jetz
Erica Stuber
Cory Merow
Scott Rinnan
Brett Jesmer
Gabriel Reygondeau
Ruth Oliver

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Yale University, New Haven, CT

Biodiversity and the many functions it provides are changing worldwide. This sets up a critical need for a better understanding of mechanisms underpinning this change and the development of new information products to help monitoring and mitigation. New technologies, data, and methods, as well as conceptual advances these have inspired, now increasingly enable work addressing this challenge for species and communities at global scale.

In this course we will discuss these new opportunities and familiarize ourselves with recent research and new approaches addressing global biodiversity change. For this we will use a combination of in-depth discussion of recent empirical work and hands-on examples of biodiversity change analysis workflows. On the technical front, we will explore the use of remote sensing though Google Earth Engine (GEE) and work through R-based scripted examples of species distribution and community change modelling. The course is offered in collaboration with the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change (https://bgc.yale.edu) and will include seminars and discussions with guest speakers.

Target audience of the course are students and postdocs and with an at least basic understanding of statistics and R scripting who are interested in the issue of biodiversity change and keen to advance their data analysis and modeling skill-set. The first meeting on 25th Jan will introduce the course and discuss the syllabus and course structure.