19-21 October 2026

This course will encompass the theory and practice of long term monitoring protocols, spanning the underlying concepts, methods, and applications. We review the theoretical aspects of the different methods (Census, Capture-Mark-Recapture, distance sampling, site occupancy and N-mixture) and will rely on a set of examples. 

The course is aimed at students, researchers, practitioners and NGO workers at any career stage with an interest in building and applying long-term monitoring protocols in a reproducible and robust way. Participants should be accustomed to working with computers, have a good internet connection. Previous basic experience with R is strongly desirable, though not strictly mandatory. All R scripts will be provided and explained in detail. 

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

-    Precisely define a question related to species monitoring;
-    Choose an appropriate analysis method; 
-    develop a field protocol;
-    Analyze the collected data by adaptating existing R script

Daily schedule: 09:00 am to 12:30 pm (Berlin time): live lectures and introduction to / review of the practicals
+ self-guided practicals using annotated R scripts, which will be available from day1

Day 1 – The different monitoring methods (Capture-Mark-Recapture - CMR, distance sampling, site occupancy, N-mixture) – presentation and hypotheses. We will describe in detail the different methods for monitoring the dynamics of animal populations over the long term. We will focus on the important assumptions of each technique and see when to use them.

Day 2 – Focus on CMR and distance sampling examples : We will see through different examples using real dataset how to analyze data from CMR and distance sampling protocols. We will in particular see how the choices made by the statistician when analyzing the data can impact the outcomes of the models. 

Day 3 – Focus on site occupancy and N-mixture examples : Site occupancy and N-mixture models are particularly adapted to monitor distribution and abundance of rare and elusive species over a large geographic range. We will see through several examples how these methods can be used and analyzed. 

" I really enjoyed the course. The most useful part was gaining a better overall understanding of occupancy models and N-mixture models, including how they work and how to implement them in practice."

"I found the discussions about how to design an effective monitoring program especially useful. The course helped me think more clearly about the questions to ask and the decisions needed when developing a monitoring strategy."

Landscape Genomics - ONLINE, 13-17 July

 Dealing with messy data in R - ONLINE, 13-15 July

Species distribution and ecological niche modelling in R - ONLINE, 14-18 September

Advanced Conservation Genomics - ONLINE, 28 September -1 October

Capture-Mark-Recapture Analyses in R - ONLINE, 6-8 October