News

FEPS/OBIS/OTGA/SEF Marine Species Distribution Modeling, Oostende, Belgium, 12 - 16 March 2018

During five days (12 - 16 March 2018), 26 participants from 15 countries gathered at the IOC Project Office for IODE, which hosts the OBIS secretariat, to get training in marine species distribution modelling. During this training, jointly organized by FEPS, OBIS, OTGA and SEF), all aspects of marine species distribution modelling from data collections to model evaluation and presentation were discussed.

Students were trained on the basics of statistical modeling and guided through the modeling phases: compiling distribution data from open access databases (e.g. OBIS) and environmental information from publically available ecological data layers (e.g. Bio-ORACLE), using geographic data in Quantum GIS and R, making informed decisions on parameter settings and methods for developing distribution models, forecasting distributions under different climate change scenarios, validating models and incorporating results in scientific manuscripts and technical reports. Additionally, general concepts of marine biogeography and invasive species were teached. The course included theoretical lectures and hands-on exercises using predominantly case studies of marine macroalgae.

All the training course material (in English) is publicly available via the Marine Species Distribution Modeling course on the OceanTeacher e-learning platform.