Course Scope

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (www.scar.org) is pleased to partner with the rOpenSci project and the Antarctic Biodiversity Portal (www.biodiversity.aq) in organ­ising a short course on tools for Southern Ocean spatial analysis and modelling using R. This course will teach participants how to retrieve, model and interpret species occurrence data from the Southern Ocean using R-tools developed through the Antarctic R community. In hands-on sessions, participants will learn how to find, download and clean data using R packages and how to display these data on Antarctic (polar projection) maps. The course will introduce various ways of analyzing the data including Species Distribution Modelling (SDM).

Course Objectives

By the end of the course students will be equipped to:

• Set up a workflow for the retrieval, cleaning and analysis of Southern Ocean biological data
• Learn which R packages can be used to do this
• Learn about species distribution models and how to develop them
• Apply these new insights to their own data.

Course length

The first part of the course (3 days) will focus on introducing various R packages and over­all workflows. The second part of the course (2 days) will be a hands-on opportunity for participants to work on their own data with the assistance of the course instructors. You can choose to only register for the first part of the course if you prefer.

The course is targeting Polar Early Career scientists, but is open to any other research students or scientists that require these skills for their work. There is space for a maximum of 20 participants.

Requirements

Some experience in the computer language R is desirable, and experience with GIS is helpful. All participants must bring their own personal laptop.

Additional information and updates available on https://github.com/SCAR/EGABIcourse19

Registration

Deadline for applications is Friday June 15th. After this date selected participants will be notified of the offer of a place and sent an invoice for the course fee. The deadline for payment is Friday 7th July 2018. Failure to pay will lead to your place being offered to someone else.

Registration form

For questions contact datascience.biodiversity.aq (at) gmail.com