Course Content
This course is oriented to marine biologists and ecologists, statisticians modelers etc. Fernando Cánovas will discuss the foundations and advance through the different capabilities that can be implemented or created with r for quantitative ecology and spatial prediction of species distribution. Main topics include intRo - basic R programming and automatize tasks; gRaphics - preparing statistical reports using R; Rspatial - analysis of vector and raster cartography, also connecting with GRASS and QGIS; multivaR - diversity and multivariate analysis: ordination and gradient analyses; ENiRG - Ecological Niche Factor Analysis in R-GRASS, habitat suitability maps, metapopulation simulations; lineaR- construction, optimization and evaluation of linear models. Representation and spatial interpretation; modelaRt- construction, optimization and evaluation of non-linear models.
Course Description
R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, etc...) and graphical techniques. Many users think of R as a statistics system. Furthermore, it is an environment within which statistical techniques are implemented. R can be extended (easily) via packages, covering a very wide range of modern statistics and much more. Objective: To discover new and interesting capabilities that R can provide us, such as spatial analyst, modeller and easy task programmer.
Course Organization
Course Pricing:
📌 Students: 180€
📌 Researchers/Academics: 200€
📌 Others: 250€
NOTE: Members of CIMAR-LA (CCMAR and CIIMAR) have the same access conditions.
If you wish to pay through CCMAR internal funds (option only available to CCMAR members), you should not make the monetary payment. In this case, you should contact the researcher responsible for these funds, requesting authorisation by email, with Cc: to expedienteccmar@ualg.pt, requesting your registration to be paid by internal transfer, indicating the name of the event, the cost centre to support and the amount. Only cost centres classified as “receitas próprias” and, possibly, the Plurianual internal allocation (requires prior authorisation from the researcher responsible for the event) are available for this payment method.
Pre-Requisites
Personal computer: some knowledge on r-environment is welcome; A basic understanding of biological science; OS Windows 7 or higher, 64 bits; r-studio.
Instructor description
Fernando Cánovas is interested in solving questions about biology and evolution of species and populations by integrating genetic and quantitative ecology tools using bioinformatics. Fernando research areas is focused on modelling the genetic diversity and the species distribution in an environmental and historical framework, as an important tool for conservation biology and management planning, using a wide variety of statistical approaches and geographical information systems and operating in a context of open-source technologies. Fernando is professor in university of Múrcia Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences.

List of articles
F Mestre, F Cánovas, R Pita, A Mira, P Beja. 2016. An R package for simulating metapopulation dynamics and range expansion under environmental change. Environmental modelling & software 81, 40-44
F Cánovas, C Magliozzi, F Mestre, JA Palazón, M González‐Wangüemert. 2016. ENiRG: R‐GRASS interface for efficiently characterizing the ecological niche of species and predicting habitat suitability. Ecography 39 (6), 593-598













