Summer School 2012

Next Generation Data Management in Movement Ecology

The week-long course was conducted for the first time from 2012-09-03 to 2012-09-07 at the Leibniz-Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin, Germany and was open to master students, PhD students, PostDocs and reseachers. It was given as a summer school by the FU Berlin, Germany and organized by UC-WRAM, IZW, MoveBank and EuroDeer. From more than 60 applicants, 25 participants with affiliation to 14 different countries were accepted and attended this summer school.

Bakground

During the recent years new tracking technologies have become available to wildlife researchers and managers, allowing data capture from a steadily increasing number of taxa, species and individual animals, causing an ever increasing amount of data. A crucial limitation for efficient use of the data is that in many cases researchers or managers still lack the tools to collect, store and efficiently share these data, in order to use its full potential.

The week long course aimed to familiarize students with the general framework (concepts, problems and solutions) of wildlife GPS-tracking data in the context of both research and wildlife management.

During the course, the participants learned to master the technical tools needed for a proper data management:

• The ability to acquire, upload, structure, manage, and query tracking data in a spatial relational database in a multi-users environment.
• The ability to visualize and analyze data using specific client applications (GIS desktop, statistical and geostatistical packages) and to integrate environmental data sets into the database.
• The basic knowledge of advanced topics on spatio-temporal data management, data flow automation, data sharing, and tracking technology.
• An overview of the main operational information systems on wildlife tracking in Europe.

Main teachers

Dr. Holger Dettki (UC-WRAM, SLU Umeå, Sweden)
Ferdinando Urbano (Consultant, EuroDeer & SAM-NINA system manager)
Dr. Francesca Cagnacci (Edmund Mach Foundation, Italy)
Sarah Davidson (MoveBank, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Germany)
Dr. Bram Van Moorter (NINA, Norway)

Course material

The developed course material can be downloaded here.