Coupling Humans and Complex Ecological Landscapes
2009 US-IALE Symposium
Snowbird, Utah | April 12-16, 2009
US-IALE 2009 Full-Day Workshops
- Bayesian Methods for Landscape Ecologists
- Random Forest Modeling in Landscape Ecology: Data Mining, Classifications, Predictions and Beyond
- What is a Landscape Anyways?
- LiDAR: Moving Landscape Ecology from 2D to 3D
Bayesian Methods for Landscape Ecologists
This workshop is now closed. A waiting list is being generated during online registration.
| Date: | Thursday, 16 April |
| Time: | 8:00 am - 5:00 pm |
| Cost: | $40.00. Box lunch included in registration fee. |
| Organizers: | Mevin B. Hooten (Utah State University), James B. Odei (USU-M&S PhD Student), Ryan R. Wilson (USU-WILD PhD Student), Tammy Wilson (USU-WILD PhD Student). |
| Enrollment: | Must pre-register on registration page. Maximum of 20 individuals. |
| Location: | TBA |
The purpose of this workshop is to provide ecologists with the
background and essential information regarding the development,
implementation, and inference in Bayesian modeling. Participants will
build up their understanding of Bayesian methods from simple principles
of probability and learn how to formulate their own models. A lab session
will provide participants with the opportunity to see how models are
implemented, results analyzed, and inference made in the R statistical
computing environment. This hands-on component will also allow
participants to explore the sensitivities of basic models to various
modeling assumptions and amounts of data. Finally, a presentation of a
subset of state-of-the-art Bayesian models from the literature followed by
a discussion thereof, will provide participants with an overview of
potential forms of analysis as well as prepare them to be able to read
ecological literature that contains technical discussion of Bayesian
methods. Fellows, early career faculty, and other interested individuals
are invited to participate.
Detailed workshop description …
Random Forest Modeling in Landscape Ecology: Data Mining, Classifications, Predictions and Beyond
| Date: | Thursday, 16 April |
| Time: | 8:00 am - 5:00 pm |
| Cost: | $40.00. Box lunch included in registration fee. |
| Organizers: | Falk Huettmann, University of Alaska, with presentations by A. Cutler, J. Evans, A. Prasad, L. Iverson, S. Cushman, Salford Systems, T. Edwards |
| Enrollment: | Must pre-register on registration page. Maximum of 20 individuals. |
| Location: | TBA |
Disciplines in which principles of Adaptive Management can get applied
benefit greatly from efficient tools. Landscape Ecology is such a
discipline, involving complex spatial data and applications to achieve
sustainability. In this context, the Random Forest, a tree-based machine
learning algorithm belonging to the ‘boosting and bagging’ family, has
achieved a high popularity. This is due to its high accuracy and universal
applicability with various data sets and questions such as multiple
regressions, data mining, clustering, Remote Sensing and spatially explicit
predictions. Random Forest is known to perform well in situations that are
inherently non-linear, multivariate and hugely complex, but it also offers
new insights into tiny data sets, where data gaps occur, or when
traditional methods such as Generalized Linear Models cannot perform well.
This full day workshop will introduce up to 20 participants to the
Random Forest algorithm, its history and diversity, the underlying
software, as well as established and new applications (spatial and
non-spatial). Further, hands-on activities are presented to make users
more familiar with the use of this powerful algorithm and create
opportunities for brainstorming and synergies. Many of the presented
Random Forest applications involve R, free trial code and Open Access.
In order to give credit to the wealth of applications, this workshop
will be taught by several experts, each covering specific topics relevant
to Landscape Ecology and modeling. It is the goal of this workshop to
bring the Random Forest user community closer together, introduce new
users to the powerful Random Forest algorithm, answer specific questions
of the user community re. Random Forest, and make the use of Random Forest
widely known in Landscape Ecology and elsewhere. This workshop will
benefit greatly from user participation and shared test data and
manuscripts, as well as from online applications and active discussions.
Detailed workshop description …
What is a Landscape Anyways?
| Date: | Thursday, 16 April |
| Time: | 8:00 am - 5:00 pm |
| Cost: | $40.00. Box lunch included in registration fee. |
| Organizers: | Daniel Rutledge, Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, Hamilton, New Zealand, and Chris Lepczyk, University of Hawai’i, Manoa, Hawai’i |
| Enrollment: | Must pre-register on registration page. Maximum of 20 individuals. |
| Location: | TBA |
Landscape ecology has grown in stature and influence over the past 20
years as witnessed by the steady growth in the use of terminology common
to our discipline. Words like patch, matrix, edge, contagion, scale, and
the like have become commonplace in the conservation, resource management,
and ecological literature, reflecting the influence that the emerging
ideas and theories of landscape ecology have had across scientific
fields. However, despite our success, the definition and understanding
of the key word(s) that differentiates our discipline from the rest of
ecology remains rather murky. Understanding, disentangling, and solving
this linguistic uncertainty is not simply a matter of refining the
discipline of landscape ecology, but is of key importance as we want to
move towards an integrated, informatic-based science, where robust
terminology is needed for data integration and interoperatbility. Thus,
our workshop seeks to address the basic question of "What is a landscape
anyways?"
Detailed workshop description …
LiDAR: Moving Landscape Ecology from 2D to 3D
| Date: | Thursday, 16 April |
| Time: | 8:00 am - 5:00 pm |
| Cost: | $40.00. Box lunch included in registration fee. |
| Organizers: | Qi Chen, University of Hawai’i, Manoa, Hawai’i |
| Enrollment: | Must pre-register on registration page. Maximum of 50 individuals. |
| Location: | TBA |
This workshop is to introduce to the landscape ecology community a
state-of-the-art remote sensing technology - LiDAR (Light Detection and
Ranging). LiDAR has unprecedented accuracy and ability of measuring
three-dimensional vegetation structure information directly. This
workshop will introduce the basic concepts and principle of LiDAR, the
popular and innovative methods for LiDAR data processing and information
extraction, with a focus on 3D vegetation mapping at a spectrum of
spatial scales varying from individual trees to regions.
Detailed workshop description …