Movement Ecology - Analyse Animal Movement Data Effectively & Confidently
*A Practical Course on Analysing Tracking Data* Modern marine-mammal research depends heavily on movement data: satellite telemetry, GPS tags, TDRs, acoustic detections, opportunistic tracks, and photo-ID–derived movement paths. Understanding how individuals move, use space, interact with their environment, and respond to human pressures is central to conservation and ecological inference. https://prstats.org/course/movement-ecology-the-analysis-of-movement-data-move09/ *Movement Ecology (MOVE09)* is a five-day, live online course that gives movement ecology researchers the tools to transform raw tracking data into rigorous ecological insight. What You Will Learn - The core principles of *movement ecology* and how they apply to large, mobile species where movement is influenced by physical and physiological constraints, prey distribution and behavioural states. - How to analyse movement trajectories: - step lengths, turning angles, path tortuosity - behavioural segmentation (e.g., foraging, travelling, resting) - identifying migration, site fidelity and exploratory behaviour - Methods for estimating *home ranges and utilisation distributions* in including how to interpret isopleths when movement is constrained by coastlines, fronts or oceanographic features. - Techniques for assessing interactions: - dynamic movement metrics - residence time and first-passage time - identifying hotspots, foraging areas and important habitats - How to conduct *resource- and step-selection analyses* using environmental covariates such as depth, chlorophyll, SST, fronts, prey proxies, or human activity layers (shipping, fishing). - How to choose and evaluate different tracking technologies and understand how sampling frequency, location error and behaviour affect analysis. Why This Course Is Valuable for Marine-Mammal Scientists Marine-mammal movement data come with unique complexities: long dive cycles, remote open-ocean habitats, environmental drivers that vary across depth and space, and irregular or error-prone location data. Simple descriptive methods rarely capture the processes driving movement. This course helps you: - Identify behavioural states, core areas, movement patterns and habitat preferences with *statistical confidence*. - Link movement pathways with *oceanographic conditions*, prey availability and anthropogenic pressures. - Quantify differences in space use across seasons, age classes, or individuals. - Produce defensible analyses for conservation, impact assessment, marine-protected-area design, and ecological publications. Course Format - *Five full days*, live online. - A clear mix of lectures, theory and R-based practicals using movement datasets. - Designed for marine-mammal ecologists, conservation scientists, telemetry analysts and graduate researchers who work with location-based or movement data. https://prstats.org/course/movement-ecology-the-analysis-of-movement-data-move09/ Please email [email protected] with any questions. -- Oliver Hooker PhD. PR stats
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