אקולוגיה מרחבית : תיאוריות וכלים (0431.3128)

Aim: In this class, students will learn the theories and techniques to analyze spatial data for ecological or biological research. I will cover Geographic Information Systems (GIS), landscape ecology, and basic spatial statistics. Main topics are basic map manipulation, species distribution (SDM), measurement of habitat fragmentation and sampling biases.

Courses (13 weeks):

1. GIS (7 weeks) - Theory part includes geodesy (theories to map earth sphere into map projections etc.) and other ecological/biological knowledge associated to manipulation of the GIS maps (e.g. habitat, connectivity etc.). Techniques part teaches students how to develop GIS database and manipulate them.

2. Landscape ecology (4 weeks) - Theory part focus on how to calculate different index for the habitat qualities (e.g. fragmentation on vegetation). I also introduce species distribution modeling (SDM) to estimate potential habitats for species based on observation records. Techniques will introduce hands-on experiences using landscape ecology software. For SDM, I will use R (e.g. dismo package).

3. Spatial statistics (2 weeks) - Theory part focus on measuring autocorrelations (Moran’s I etc.) and sampling methods. Techniques will use existing dataset to calculate autocorrelations and sampling biases. NOTE: This part may be dropped, depending on the progress.