2024 - Biodiversity Modelling Summer School

Presentation

This annual summer school will give you the opportunity to further your knowledge of biodiversity modelling, in an informal and friendly atmosphere. The 2024 edition will be on the theme: Indicators to monitor biodiversity changes.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in December 2022 sets ambitious objectives to protect and restore biodiversity for 2030. Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are currently developing their plan to meet these objectives in preparation for the next COP that will be held in the fall 2024. A critical aspect of this work will be the elaboration of a set of indicators to monitor the achievement of the GBF, from local to global scales.

The main objective of the 2024 summer school in computational biodiversity science will be to develop a report of the current state of biodiversity for Canada, based on the most recent science on biodiversity indicators and using state-of-the-art technologies in data science. The intensive course consists of a five-day workshop dedicated to data analysis, complemented by short technical lectures by leading scientists in the domain.

Official 3-credit course (at the MSc or PhD level) from the Faculty of Science of the Université de Sherbrooke or Non-credit continuing education

Themes

Biodiversity changes and the Global biodiversity framework
Designing an indicator
Essential Biodiversity variables and standards
Data pipelines
Communicating biodiversity changes for decision makers

Instructors

Dominique Gravel, professor at the Université de Sherbrooke and co-director of the Réseau de suivi de la biodiversité du Québec (Biodiversité Québec)

With the participation of:

Diego Creimer, director finance and biodiversity at Canadian Parks And Wilderness Society (CPAWS) Quebec
Katherine Hébert, postdoctoral researcher at McGill University
Guillaume Larocque, research professional at Quebec Center for biodiversity science (QCBS)
Laura Pollock, professor at McGill University
Other guest speakers

Prerequisites

This course is intended for students and professionals from all sectors. No prior knowledge in biodiversity modeling is required, but an intermediate level of knowledge in scientific programming is necessary.

Information about venue

Registration

Anyone interested in taking part in the summer school must complete the form by March 31, 2024.

Applications will be reviewed to ensure that the prerequisites are met. If the number of applications is too high, a selection of applications will be made.

Official registration (admission and payment of registration fees) will take place during the week of March 25, 2024

The intensive summer school is supported by Université de Sherbrooke and the NSERC-CREATE Training program in computational biodiversity science and services BIOS².