WORKSHOP 2

Tidy Data Manipulation and Animal Movement Modelling in R

Saturday, 25 June 2022 (Full day)

Presenters: Devin Johnson, NOAA-NMFS, USA; Josh London, NOAA-NMFS, USA; Brett McClintock, NOAA-NMFS, USA

ABSTRACT:
The study of animal movement has always been a key element in ecological science because it is inherently linked to critical processes that scale from individuals to populations and communities to ecosystems. Rapid improvements in bio-logging technology and processing capacity have necessitated an expansion of data management workflows and statistical methods for characterizing animal movement. This workshop is intended for wildlife biologists, quantitative ecologists, and statisticians who seek a practical understanding of modern animal movement analysis methods. We provide an overview of telemetry data workflows using the tidyverse of R packages and analysis procedures using a variety of movement modelling R packages, including

• pathroutr for re-routing tracks around barrier polygons (e.g. land)
• crawl for continuous-time correlated random walks and path prediction
• ctmcmove for utilization distribution estimation based on continuous-time Markov chains
• momentuHMM for inferring distinct movement behaviour states

We will focus additional topics of discussion around common questions researchers may have when deciding on an analytical approach. Examples include questions regarding discrete- versus continuous-time and discrete- versus continuous-space models, incorporation of auxiliary data streams (e.g. accelerometer or marine animal dive data), evaluation of habitat use and associated environmental covariates, predicting responses in movement and behaviour to environmental change, and efficient propagation of measurement and model uncertainty in final results.

FORMAT: In-person at the venue in Cape Town only
Cost: R1,000 per person (US$70)