AOU/COS 2015 Meeting Geolocator analysis workshop at the 2015 AOU/COS Conference

[ebridge]

I am pleased to announce a free instructional workshop on geolocator analysis that will be held in association with the 2015 joint meeting of the American Ornithologists Union and the Cooper Ornithological Society in Norman Oklahoma (http://aoucos2015.ou.edu). The two-day workshop entitled, "Light-level geolocation with open source tools," will convene on the morning of 27 July, 2015 and will end the following Tuesday at about 5pm. Thanks to the support of the Cooper Ornithological Society, there is no enrollment fee for this workshop.

The workshop will be led by Nat Seavy of Point Blue Conservation Science with assistance from Renee Cormier (also from Point Blue), myself, and others. The workshop will demonstrate the implementation of a number of R packages that can be used to derive location estimates from light-level geolocation data loggers. We will begin with simple thresholding methods and accessory analyses that might be familiar to some of you (e.g. GeoLight and KFtrack) and progress through some recent, more advanced analysis packages that are (we presume) new to the vast majority of geolocator users (e.g., SGAT and FlightR). The workshop will enable you to make the most of your geolocator data and derive not just location estimates but also uncertainty metrics for those estimates. We will also present helpful techniques for assessing migration phenologies, categorizing stationary and migratory periods, and presenting your results. We hope you will bring your data to work on during the workshop.

I am confident that this workshop will change how we do business. I hope that you will be able to attend or send a representative from your lab. I also hope that you will pass this news on to any potential attendees who may not know about it.

A few more details:

To sign up: Visit the AOU/COS 2015 website (http://aoucos2015.ou.edu) and follow the "WORKSHOPS" link at the top to the workshops page. Near the bottom is a link to a google sign-up service where you can register for the workshop.

NOTE THE DEADLINE AND ATTENDEE LIMIT: Abstract submission and early registration (reduced fee) for the meeting must be done by May 3, 2015. Registration for the workshop will remain open until we reach our maximum attendance of 35 people. At that point you will be able to join a waiting list from which we will fill any spots that become vacant.

Do you have to attend both days? Not necessarily. The first day will be concerned with installing R packages, manipulating and evaluating light level data, and conducting analyses with well established R packages. If you are an advanced R user and an experienced analyst of geolocator data, you can probably pick up the thread on day two when we delve into the newer and more advanced analysis packages.

Please contact me with any questions.

Dr. Eli S. Bridge
Assistant Professor
Oklahoma Biological Survey
University of Oklahoma
111 E Chesapeake St
Norman, OK 73019
(405) 325-2658
ebridge@ou.edu