Introduction to Camera Trap Data Management and Analysis in R

• Start Date: September 20, 2023
• End Date: September 22, 2023
• Time: varies - see schedule below
• City: Revelstoke BC
• Venue: SD19's admin building: 501 – 11th Street, Revelstoke, BC
• Instructor: Dr. Chris Beirne
• Registration now full. To join waitlist email [email protected]

IMAGES: Cole Burton

Course Description

The number of projects employing camera traps to understand ecological phenomena is growing rapidly – as are the number of statistical tools to analyze the resultant data. Consequently, the management and analysis of camera trap data can seem complex and overwhelming. This course aims to guide participants in effective ways to store, manipulate and analyze camera trap data within the R statistical environment.

It will cover data storage and exploration of best practices, introductions to the major methods used to analyze camera trap data, all using real world camera data. The course will give participants the tools to manage, analyze and share camera trap data in an approachable and practical way!

Course Schedule:

Wed, Sept 20, 2023: 11am – 6pm

Thu, Sept 21, 2023: 8am – 4pm

Fri, Sept 22, 2023: 8am – 2pm

 

Course objectives

The following course objectives have informed the course itinerary – a copy of this detailed outline is available upon request:

• Introduce camera trap data standards and formatting
• Explain basic pre-processing workflows
• Introduce common routines for checking the quality of camera data and dealing with commonly encountered errors in real world data
• Give participant hands-on experience in using camera trap data to quantify:
  • community composition
  • single species habitat-use
  • multi-species habitat-use
  • density
  • activity patterns
• Discuss when and where other analytical approaches not covered by the course may be appropriate (e.g. occupancy, behaviour, species distribution, and structural equation models) and provide resources for further study
• Discuss the WildCAM initiative and other synthesis projects

 

Our instructor

Christopher Beirne has worked with camera traps for 11 years in North America, South America and Africa resulting in multiple scientific publications and technical reports. He has been using R on a near daily basis since 2011. He is currently a Senior Scientist at Osa Conservation, an affiliated researcher in the Wildlife Coexistance Lab at UBC  and a member of Camera Trap Network for Western Canada (WildCAM).

For those of you who attended our popular conference, Scaling Up Camera Trap Surveys to Inform Regional Wildlife Conservation, you’ll remember Chris as the lead facilitator for the workshop on how to perform robust exploration and analysis in R with camera trap data. Chris is also well known in CMI circles for his popular CREDtalk (season 5), which we recommend you watch prior to this course.

 

Who should take this course?

This course will be of interest to undergraduates, graduates, wildlife professionals, regional biologists, and interested communities/organizations in camera trapping methods and analysis.

 

Prerequisites, preparation and what to bring

To get the most out of this course students should be familiar with the basics of using R and R Studio. Experience with importing and exporting datasets, using “data frame” objects, and making basic plots (e.g. scatter plots and boxplots) will be beneficial. That said, all code will be provided and reproducible, so even students with minimal R experience will get a lot from the course!

Example camera trap data and course materials will be provided two weeks before the course start date.

Please come prepared to the course with:

• Laptop with the following programs installed
  • R: https://www.r-project.org/
  • R Studio Desktop: https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/
• External monitor and mouse – not mandatory but you are welcome to bring these things. You’ll have enough space to set them up.
• If participant have their own data, they should format it into the Wildlife Insights metadata standard format.
• *Optional but highly recommended* Watch Chris’ previous seminar delivered in season 5 of CMI’s CREDtalks. You can find that here

 

What is included with this course?

• Instruction, course manual, and other course materials
• Reproducible code to use on your own projects
• Coffee breaks with snacks!
• Participants will have the option of purchasing bagged lunches upon registration. If they choose not to, we suggest you bring your own lunch as there are limited options for quick lunches near the college where the course will take place

 

Registration

Member: $530

Non-member: $575

Bagged lunches $17/day, optional. Refreshments will be provided at the breaks as part of your registration fees. All food provided by La Baguette.

Limited class size of ~18 people, register immediately to secure your spot.

*Memberships may be purchased and renewed while you register. More about membership here.

Registration now full. To join waitlist email office@cmiae.org

 

When the course fills, you can request to be placed on the cancellation list – Anyone on this list will have the chance of filling registration cancellations as well as being the first to be notified when we open up registration for next season’s course. Please email office@cmiae.org to be placed on the wait list.

 

Where to stay?

We have arranged two discounted group rates for the duration of this course (you are welcome to stay a few days longer and still receive the discount.) In both cases you need to phone the hotel to book your room, ask for the “CMI rate.”  Book asap, it will be a busy time in Revelstoke with the Luna Arts Festival taking place.

 

Our event partners

A big thanks to the WildCAM Network for all the work they do and for supporting this course.