Subject: Course live online: Evaluating and validating species distribution models with R, May, 2025
Soledad De Esteban Trivigno
Dear colleagues,
Transmitting Science has opened registration for the online
course “Evaluating and validating species distribution models with R”.
To promote interaction, the course will be held in a small group (maximum 18 participants). This course is designed for PhD students, postdocs, and researchers interested in evaluating species distribution models; some familiarity with building species distribution models is recommended.
Dates: May 6th and 8th, 2025, from 10:00 to 14:00 (Madrid time zone).
Course webpage: https://www.transmittingscience.com/courses/ecology/evaluating-and-validating-species-distribution-models-with-r/
COURSE OVERVIEW
Species distribution models are commonly evaluated with metrics such as the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC), the true skill statistic (TSS), Cohen’s kappa, sensitivity, specificity, or the overall classification accuracy or correct classification rate.
These metrics assess discrimination and/or classification capacity, i.e., the ability of the model to distinguish and classify localities with and without presence records. However, this is only one limited aspect of model performance. Other aspects, such as calibration or reliability (i.e., how predicted presence probabilities relate to observed occurrence frequencies), are also very important, albeit often overlooked, aspects of model performance. In addition, common discrimination metrics are often deceivingly high for rare species and naturally lower for generalist species, which do not clearly discriminate “good” from “bad” habitat.
Model quality should thus be assessed with a comprehensive set of
evaluation measures, appropriate for species with different ecological
and biogeographical traits.
In this short course, we will use R to
compute a wide range of model evaluation metrics, encompassing
discrimination, classification, explanatory power and calibration. We
will also see different ways to validate models outside their training
area, including spatial block cross-validation.
The course will be highly interactive and include theoretical and practical sessions. Participants are encouraged to bring their own models with observed and predicted values, though they can also work with example models that will be provided.
If you have any questions do not hesitate to write to cou...@transmittingscience.com
Best wishes
Sole