It is our pleasure to announce the 2017 Movement Ecology Summer School (MESS) organised through the Life Science Zurich Graduate School, PhD Ecology Program. The MESS will be held in Faido (Ticino, Switzerland) during 27.8 – 1.9.2017.
The course builds on the expertise and positive feed-backs of the past summer schools. For this year too, we were able to secure the participation of leading scientists in the field of movement ecology and remote sensing:
Dr. Gabriela Schaepman-Strub (Zurich University)
Prof. John Fieberg (University of Minnesota)
Prof. Luca Börger (Swansea University)
Dr. Gabriele Cozzi (Zurich University)
This one-week course covers several aspects of animal movement ecology and includes both theoretical and conceptual and practical sessions. The course builds on analytical complexity and leads the participant through several steps. During day one, the participants will learn to source landscape information through available remote sensing imagery and to import, manipulate and represent geographical data into R. Day two will be dedicated to the decomposition of movement trajectories and characterisation of movement modes and phases. During day three the participants will be exposed to common methods used in the calculation of home ranges and discuss the pros and cons. During the next day we will use presence/absence data to analyze habitat selection. Finally, during the last day, the participants will be exposed to some new tools and methodologies to include data from alternative sensors (e.g. accelerometers) in the study of animal movements. Fundamental aspects such as study design, spatial autocorrelation, sources of error and time varying covariates will be discussed. Data sets will be provided but the participants are encouraged to bring their own data. Active participation during the course is required to obtain 2 ECTS credit points.
Please note, this course is organised for PhD students of the Life Science Zurich Graduate School. Priority will be given to students registered in the PhD Program in Ecology, however PhD and MSc students from other universities may attend if there are available places.
Please do not hesitate to contact me (gabriele.cozzi@uzh.ch) for further information