**UPDATE: presentation can be found here.**

In case you haven’t made your summer vacation plans yet, I happen to be a guest lecturer for this intensive summer workshop/course. It’s mainly designed for wildlife ecologists so you might wonder what I’ll be doing there. Well, wherever spatial data is involved, I’m there!

While I surely won’t be the person providing ecological context, hopefully my participation will provide some different insights to the world of  geographic data handling with spatial databases. I’ll try my best and come up with an interesting lecture about the possibilities of PostGIS in spatial data handling. You know, all the cool stuff. Buckle up, it will be an interesting course that is extremely useful for ecologists. Hoping to see you there!

Next Generation Data Management in Movement Ecology

WIS 6934/74A8, 2 credit hours, Summer C 2016

• Dates: June 6-June 10, 2016
• Venue: Fort Lauderdale REC, Davie, Florida (driving directions from Gainesville)
• Contact: Mathieu Basille

• Instructors: David Bucklin (UF WEC) & Mathieu Basille (UF WEC)
• Attendance: Reserved for UF students and professionals. Limited seats are available on a first come – first served basis.
  • Students: To register, please contact Ms. Claire Williams. Students in need of accommodation should contact Mathieu Basille.
  • Professionals: Attendance open for a fee, please contact Mathieu Basille for further details.
• Prerequisite: None. Data Carpentry for Biologists (WIS 6934 from Ethan White) sugsested, but not required.

Description

Recent technological progress has allowed ecologists to obtain a huge amount and diversity of animal movement data sets of increasing spatial and temporal resolution and size, together with complex associated information related to the environmental context, such as habitat types based on remote sensing, population density, and weather. Based on several years of experience on multiple species, this intensive five-day workshop is designed to teach participants how to handle, manage, store and retrieve movement data in a spatial database, and how to eventually feed them to analysis tools. In the first part of the course, participants will be exposed to basics of spatial databases for wildlife tracking data, using PostgreSQL/PostGIS, the reference free and open-source database system. The second part will focus on the integration of environmental data in the process. The third part will tackle the specifics of movement data, and how to connect the database to the R statistical environment for analysis. Step by step, using reproducible, hands-on exercises that will be released on-line, we will provide a complete and seamless procedure from raw data to final analysis that will enable participants to fully manage and integrate complex animal movement data sets. Although the workshop is intended for a wide audience, basic knowledge of SQL, spatial databases and R are highly recommended to get the best experience.

Students will have to bring their own laptop computers, with necessary software installed (instructions will be provided).

Source: ASE