ApexRMS workshop and talks at the North American Congress for Conservation Biology

ApexRMS is excited to announce that we will be delivering a series of talks and a workshop at this year’s North American Congress for Conservation Biology (NACCB), June 23-28 in Vancouver, B.C.

Leonardo Frid, our systems ecologist, will be leading a workshop covering the basics of how to build ecological forecasting workflows using SyncroSim. During this one-hour workshop, participants will learn how to connect models of landscape change using ST-Sim to models of species distribution using WISDM, habitat connectivity using omniscape, and ecosystem carbon using LUCAS. Participants will also learn how to leverage the existing SyncroSim infrastructure to add and connect their own custom models into a workflow.

In addition to our workshop, ApexRMS will be involved in the following presentations given by our staff and collaborators:

• Katie Birchard, our data scientist, will present her work on developing an artificial neural network approach for population assignment. She will discuss how this tool can help improve the ability of scientists and conservationists to accurately monitor threats to endangered populations and manage populations accordingly.
• Carina Firkowski, our quantitative ecologist, will talk about a new SyncroSim tool for assessing the impact of habitat restoration on ecological connectivity, with a case-study demonstration of the tool in practice.
• Catherine Jarnevich, our partner from the U.S. Geological Survey, will introduce the SyncroSim package WISDM – the Workbench for Integrated Species Distribution Modeling. Catherine will demonstrate how WISDM can be used to model the distribution of an invasive species in response to future climate scenarios.
• Brian Miller, another partner from the U.S. Geological Survey, will go over a generalized approach to climate change scenario planning and recent innovations. In his talk, Brian will describe the benefits of scenario-based climate change planning and how it can be used to inform natural resource management planning.
• Andrea Norris, our partner from Environment and Climate Change Canada, will talk about weaving Indigenous and Western sciences to forecast tree cavity excavator habitat and ecosystem carbon for an old growth forest ecosystem.
• Meagan Oldfather, our partner from the U.S. Geological Survey, will discuss regional patterns in climate uncertainty across public lands, and how these patterns can support climate adaptation planning.

Read more about these talks through the conference online program. There is still time to register and join us at NACCB this summer. We hope to connect with you there!