Committee

Co-Convenors

Brett Scheffers
University of Florida, USA

Brett Scheffers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida. Over the past 15 years, he has studied the ecology of species and habitats in tropical, temperate and boreal ecosystems.

Brett’s interests include multidimensional species distributions, canopy science, community assembly/disassembly, ecophysiology, ecological scaling rules, and thermal complexity of landscapes. He uses these concepts to assess species and habitat vulnerability and resilience under novel climates and human disturbances.

Carolyn Cox
Florida Climate Institute, USA

Carolyn Cox leads the Florida Climate Institute, a 10-university climate consortium throughout the state of Florida. She has degrees in Education and Marketing and prior to joining the University of Florida, Carolyn was a Science teacher and a marketing executive.

Since 2009, she has coordinated several large research awards from the USDA, NSF, DoD, and private foundations. In addition to research management, she also leads the communications, strategic partnerships, program design and evaluation, and education initiatives for the institute.

Steering Committee

Juliano Palacios Abrantes
The University of British Columbia, Canada

Juliano Palacios Abrantes is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries of the University of British Columbia researching how climate change is shifting the distribution of marine species generating uncertain feedbacks on ecosystems and dependent human communities. His work focuses on how these shifts affect international shared fish stocks, threatening their sustainability and accentuating sources of conflict, ultimately highlighting the need for adaptive, collaborative, equitable and ecosystem-based management strategies.

While Juliano’s research spans global to local studies, having been born in Brazil and raised in Mexico, he has a special interest in supporting marine research and governance in Latin America.

Wendy-Lin Bartels
University of Florida, USA/South Africa

Dr. Bartels works at the interface of academia and society, exploring scientist-stakeholder interactions within the arenas of sustainable rural development, natural resource conservation, and climate risk management. She conducts social research on the factors shaping collaborative partnerships. She also facilitates networks and community platforms for knowledge exchange, collective learning, and problem solving.

Lise Comte
Illinois State University, USA/France

Lise Comte is an Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Illinois State University (USA). She holds a PhD and MSc in Ecology from the University of Toulouse (France). Her research focuses on understanding and predicting biological responses to novel environments, from shifts in population performance to species distributions and community composition.

She is especially interested by the effects of contemporary climate change on freshwater organisms, with the goal of advancing the tools and knowledge to guide conservation strategies.

David Edwards
University of Sheffield, UK

David’s research focuses at the nexus of biodiversity conservation, tropical land-use and climate change, and environmental economics. He uses rigorous field assessment to understand how land-use and climate change impacts biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

His research reveals the conservation value of degraded tropical forests and informs the development of more sustainable practices. David incorporates environmental economics and policy frameworks to identify cost-effective solutions to key drivers of the global biodiversity extinction crisis.

Birgitta Evengård
Umeå University, Sweden

Birgitta Evengård is a specialist in infectious diseases and has worked as a senior consultant for many years. She became professor in Clinical Parasitology at Karolinska Institute in 2006 and the first female professor with a chair in infectious diseases in Sweden at Umeå University in 2007. Since 2007 the main focus for her research has been Climate change and transition of infectious diseases in the North. In 2016 she received funding as a lead from the Nordic Council of Ministers for a Nordic centre of Excellence, a five-year project involving all Nordic countries, England and Russia, www.clinf.org.

She is at present a member of the Lancet Commission for Health in the Arctic, the Executive board EU Polar-Net 2 and an AMAP/SDWG Health group in the Arctic Council. She is the author of 11 books, 22 bookchapters and more than 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals, citations more than 9.795, h-index 37.

Belen Fadrique
University of Leeds, UK

Belen Fadrique is a Marie Curie Fellow at the School of Environment at the University of Leeds working on the Species Responses to Climate Change in the Amazon to Andes (RESCATA) project. As plant species in the Andes-Amazon region respond to climate change, their population size may change if they fail to migrate or acclimate. In RESCATA, she will test the role of several potential drivers of species success and failure. Before this position, Belen got her PhD at University of Miami. Her research focused on investigating the role of bamboo as a potential modulator of local and regional forest dynamics.

Rob Guralnick
University of Florida, USA

Rob Guralnick’s work integrates spatial ecology, trait biology and genomics – and often these are used together in integrative modeling frameworks. Because so much of the work his work uses digital data available from natural history collections and citizen science naturalists, he’s involved in ecological and biodiversity informatics initiatives to increase the quality, availability and utility of such datasets at the global scale. In particular, he has been involved in building tools and resources to enhance reusability of legacy and current data especially phenology, phenotypic responses and species distributions.

Roger Griffis
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA

Roger Griffis is a marine ecologist with over 20 years of experience building and leading NOAA science programs for the conservation and management of living marine resources. As Climate Change Coordination for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), he has helped lead efforts to identify and address key needs for climate-informed management of fisheries and protected resources.

Current efforts include working with internal and external partners to prepare for and respond to climate-related changes in the distribution and abundance of marine species.

Mitchell Lennan
University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

Mitchell Lennan (BSc (Hons), MSc, LLM) is a PhD Candidate in international law of the sea at the University of Strathclyde and a member of the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance (SCELG) and the UKRI GCRF One Ocean Hub. His PhD research looks at the international legal issues around fisheries redistribution under climate change. Specifically, the role that regional fisheries management organisations can play in adapting fisheries management to a changing climate.

Mitchell has contributed to multiple cutting-edge international legal consultancies for the UK Government, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as providing research assistance for the One Ocean Hub and BENELEX projects. Mitchell teaches law of the sea and international environmental law at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Mitchell will commence a Lectureship in Energy and Environment Law at the University of Aberdeen from 1 July 2022.

Jonathan Lenoir
Université de Picardie Jules Verne, France

I’m a researcher in Ecology & Biostatistics broadly interested in the ecological dynamics associated with spatial and temporal global changes, including biological invasions, with particular emphasis on the biotic responses to contemporary climate change.

My research interests range from broad-scale and long-term range dynamics (i.e. biodiversity redistribution) under macroclimate change to finer-scale and shorter-term dynamics, such as the contribution of microclimatic processes on species persistence within microrefugia

Julie Lockwood
Rutgers University, USA

Julie Lockwood is Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources at Rutgers University, where she currently serves as the Director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. Julie holds a PhD in Zoology from the University of Tennessee, and a MSc and BSc in Biology from Georgia Southern University.

She oversees a research program that encompasses biodiversity conservation, invasion science, and climate change. She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Beyond publishing research papers, she co-authored Avian Invasions and Invasion Ecology, and co-edited Biotic Homogenization and Coastal Conservation.

Tero Mustonen
Snowchange, Finland

Dr Tero Mustonen, a passionate defender of traditional worldview and cosmology of his people, is a Finn and the head of village of Selkie in North Karelia, Finland. He is the traditional knowledge coordinator for Eurasia for the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment. Professionally, he works for the award-winning Snowchange Cooperative, which is a non-profit organization based in Finland with members across the Arctic, including the communities of Eastern Sámi, Chukchi, Yukaghir, Sakha, Evenk, Even, Inuit, Inuvialuit, Gwitchin and many more.

Dr Mustonen is well-known scholar of the Arctic biodiversity, climate change and indigenous issues, having published over a dozen publications on the topics, including the ground-breaking Eastern Sámi Atlas and Snowscapes, Dreamscapes. Dr Mustonen lives in the middle of the last old-growth forest in Selkie with his wife, Kaisu, two goats and 10 chicken without running water. He is a winter seiner. He has won several human rights and environmental awards for the work with Snowchange and indigenous peoples of the Arctic. He is also an adopted full status member of the Kwakwakwala First Nation based in British Columbia, Canada.

Aníbal Pauchard
University of Concepcion, Chile

Ph.D in Forestry Ecology from the University of Montana, United States. Currently is Full Professor in the Faculty of Forestry Sciencies in the University of Concepción. He is the founder and director of the LIB, a joint intitiative from UdeC and the Ecology and Biodiversity Insititute. His research approach is biological invasions’s ecology and its impacts on biodiversity and ecosistems functions.

Through the use of multi-scale approach, based in field observations and experiments, he had studied the sinergies that exists betweent global change agents and invasions in mountain’s ecosystems. He is also interested in conservation and natural resources management subjects. Pauchard colaborates in IPBES, Intergovernmental Platfom of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and is, also, Associate Editor in international scientific journals, as the Journal of Applied Ecology and Biological Invasions.

Gretta Pecl
University of Tasmania, Australia

Gretta Pecl is a Professor of marine ecology at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), and the Director of the Centre for Marine Socioecology (CMS) at UTAS. She has expertise exploring the impact of climate change on natural systems, and developing adaptation options for conservation, fisheries and aquaculture. She is a Lead Author for the IPCC AR6 report, an Australian Research Council ‘Future Fellow’, and an associate editor for several leading international journals.

Gretta has been prominent in UN Decade of Ocean Science programmes, actions and working groups, including co-leading Future Seas 2030 and other major international initiatives. She has a strong passion for science communication and engagement with the public. Gretta started the Species on the Move conference series in 2016.

Malin Pinsky
Rutgers University, USA

Malin is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA) in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, a member of the Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, and an affiliate in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences.

His interests focus on global change ecology and evolution, particularly the consequences of climate change for biodiversity, the genomics of evolutionary rescue, and the implications for conservation design. He is an Earth Leadership Program Fellow and an early career fellow in the Ecological Society of America, and he was named one of Science News’ ten scientists to watch, an Alfred Sloan Fellow in Ocean Sciences, and a Kavli Fellow (National Academy of Sciences).

Sadie Ryan
University of Florida, USA

Sadie J. Ryan is an Associate Professor of Medical Geography in the Department of Geography and in the Emerging Pathogens Institute (EPI) at the University of Florida, PI of the Quantitative Disease Ecology and Conservation (QDEC) Lab group (www.sadieryan.net), and co-director of the UF Florida Climate Institute.

Ryan’s undergrad training is in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (BA, Princeton), with an emphasis on conservation biology, quantitative ecology, and particularly, disease ecology. Ryan’s PhD work (UC Berkeley) centered on African buffalo spatial ecology in their savanna environment, in the context of an epidemic of Bovine Tuberculosis. Ryan’s postdoctoral work in Anthropological Science (Stanford, McGill), Ecology (NCEAS) and Geography (UCSB), launched her interdisciplinary work looking at the anthropogenic impacts of land use change, climate change, and conservation management goals in African parks landscapes, and the role of socioecological systems in disease transmission in Africa and Latin America.

Ryan’s research is funded through multiple avenues, including CDC, USAID, World Bank, NSF, NIH, and DoD, supporting theoretical to applied research and training, with current focus on climate and socioecological systems impacts on vector-borne disease transmission and management in Africa and the Americas. Ryan’s team currently conducts research investigating the multiscale issues of health on landscapes, and interactions with land use and climate change, livelihoods, sustainability, policy, the urban environment, public health decision-making, and local perceptions. QDEC Lab is home to multiple projects in ecology at the human interface, from Florida to the global tropics.

Rebecca Senior
Durhan University, UK

Rebecca recently joined the Department of Biosciences at Durham University (UK) as an Assistant Professor of Ecology. She is a conservation biologist interested in exploring ecological patterns across scales to inform pragmatic and adaptable conservation practices. Rebecca has a particular interest in using advances in technology and open data to tackle difficult questions.

Beth Stys
US Fish and Wildlife Service, USA

Beth Stys is the Regional Climate Adaptation Ecologist within the USFWS’s Science Applications and Migratory Birds Program, Southeast Region. She has been in this new position since October 2021 and is focusing on incorporation of climate change adaptation strategies across USFWS programs in the southeast.

Prior to this, she spent 30 years working for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). Her work focused on landscape level conservation planning, species habitat modeling, and climate change. Beth received a B.S. in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences from Texas A&M University and an M.S. degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Ecology from Mississippi State University.

Jennifer Sunday
McGill University, Canada

Jennifer Sunday is an Assistant Professor at McGill University, specializing in how species distributions respond to environmental change, through direct effects, adaptive capacities, and biotic interactions. Her work has contributed novel advances in understanding how physiological variables relate to species’ ranges and their climate vulnerabilities, and how climate change responses occur in the context of community interactions and temporally varying environments. Dr. Sunday is additionally an affiliate of the Hakai Institute, where she is advancing the use of eDNA for tracking marine biodiversity responses to global change.

Morgan Tingley
University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Morgan Tingley joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles as an Associate Professor in 2020, after previously serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.Sc. from Oxford University, and a B.A. from Harvard University.

His research combines original field data with biodiversity informatics and Bayesian modeling to understand how large-scale anthropogenic drivers of change affect geographic distributions and community interactions over short to long timespans.

Sunday May 14, 2023
9 am - 4 pm

USING MICROCLIMATE DATA AND MODELS FOR ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS

Lead organizer: Dave Klinges, University of Florida, dklinges9@gmail.com

Co-organizers: Mike Kearney, University of Melbourne, m.kearney@unimelb.edu.au; Ilya Maclean, i.m.d.maclean@exeter.ac.uk; Rebecca Senior, Durham University, rebecca.senior@durham.ac.uk

Understanding the impacts of global change on organisms and ecosystems requires data and models that represent ecologically-relevant conditions. Microclimates have long been studied in ecology, and a recent resurgence of interest has produced a proliferation of fine-resolution, large-extent databases, along with models that predict microclimate and organismal responses. This hands-on coding workshop will overview the application of microclimatic information in ecology and introduce several R packages, and may be of interest to any who seek to use quantitative methods in climate change ecology. We will cater to conference attendees with novice or intermediate modeling experience, and there is no prerequisite for familiarity with climate or biophysical modeling.

Climate and the niche: We will review the direct and indirect connections between climate and organisms and how this relates to the ecological niche, especially the distinction between the realized and fundamental niche and between correlative and mechanistic niche modeling and their projection to predict distributions.
Climate databases and access: we will cover several established and new climate data products that are suitable for ecological applications [e.g. WorldClim, ERA5, terraclimate, CHELSA, SoilTemp, ForestTemp, DirtClim], and briefly compare them to shed light on how each can be useful.
Climate downscaling and variable selection: we will demystify several downscaling techniques (methods to convert coarse macroclimate to higher-resolution, more proximal local conditions) via mcera5 and other tools. Furthermore we will discuss best practices for summarizing climate time series data into ecologically-relevant bioclimatic variables.
Microclimate and biophysical modeling: we will then use several mechanistic models that can predict high-resolution microclimates at practically any time and anywhere on earth [NicheMapR, microclima, microclimc, microclimf]. We will also use mechanistic niche models to simulate the physiology and behavior of an organism in response to local microclimate, for understanding its body condition, demography, or other ecological consequences, using RShiny apps for NicheMapR.
Microclimate applications in ecology: we will finish with further approaches for understanding species niches, distributions, and habitat suitability, such as climate-driven Species Distribution Models (SDMs) and connecting microclimate to life history using metabolic theory.

After this workshop, participants will be equipped with the tools and knowledge to employ cutting-edge climate and biophysical modeling techniques. Participants will be provided in advance instructions to install the necessary packages, the R scripts to be used, and the corresponding data (no requirement to bring your data). Participants are expected to be familiar with base R/RStudio, and we will follow tidyverse conventions.

Sunday May 14, 2023
9 am - 5 pm

Important Note: This workshop is a two part workshop with Part 1 workshop being led by Mireia Valle. In the early afternoon of Sunday, Part 2 will be led by Saras Windecker (University of Melbourne) and David Uribe-Rivera (CSIRO Australia) and provide an overview of model-based data integration for modeling species’ distributions.

SDM Part 1

Building species distribution models in accordance with the ecological niche theory

Lead organizer: Mireia Valle, AZTI, Marine Research, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), mvalle@azti.es

Co-organizers: Leire Citores, AZTI, Marine Research, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), lcitores@azti.es; Maite Erauskin , AZTI, Marine Research, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), merauskin@azti.es; Leire Ibaibarriaga, AZTI, Marine Research, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), libaibarriaga@azti.es; Guillem Chust, AZTI, Marine Research, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), gchust@azti.es

Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used as a tool for understanding species spatial ecology. They link species occurrence or abundance with environmental features of the location, via statistical modelling. According to ecological niche theory, species response curves are unimodal with respect to environmental gradients. While a variety of statistical methods have been developed for species distribution modelling, a general problem with most of these habitat modelling approaches is that the estimated response curves can display biologically implausible shapes which do not respect ecological niche theory. This is because species response curves are fit statistically with any assumption or restriction, which sometimes do not respect the ecological niche theory. To better understand species response to environmental changes, SDMs should consider theoretical background such as the ecological niche theory and pursue the unimodality of the response curve with respect to environmental gradients. At this short course you will learn to build SDMs under the ecological niche theory framework. We will use shape-constrained generalized additive models (SC-GAMs) that allow imposing concavity constraints in the linear predictor scale and avoid overfitting. SC-GAMs are based on the same statistical framework as GLMs and GAMs regression methods, but they allow us to incorporate monotonicity and concavity shape-constraints in the component functions of the linear predictor of the GAMs. Imposing concavity constraints should be an effective alternative to fitting nonsymmetric parametric response curves, while retaining the unimodality constraint, required by ecological niche theory, for direct variables and limiting factors. We will guide you building SC-GAMs from the beginning retrieving the occurrence data and environmental data from global public datasets. We will clean raw data removing outliers and select the environmental variables using a step-forward function. The course is intended to anyone who wants to broaden their knowledge of SDMs and improve their model’s realism. We will follow a R tutorial developed in AZTI. R is a programming language widely used by data scientists and R basic knowledge is required to follow the course.

Sunday May 14, 2023
9 am - 4 pm

Application of connectivity modeling to identify and predict movement and range redistribution

Workshop leads: Prof. Rob Fletcher (Professor) University of Florida, Andrew Marx (Data scientist, University of Florida), Maru Iezzi (Postdoctoral Associate, University of Florida), Alex Baecher (PhD student, University of Florida)

Required materials:
1) Install R on your computer (if you haven’t already!).
3) Make sure to install / update the following R packages: samc, raster, terra, gdistance, sf, tidyverse, leaflet, htmlwidgets, Matrix
4) We will provide other materials over email (code, data, literature).

This 1 day workshop will distill the basic principles of connectivity modeling and its relevance to predicting movement and species redistribution with environmental change. Participants will be introduced to a circuit theoretic approach as well as a new framework utilizing spatial-absorbing markov chains (SAMC) and how to apply this analytical tool to study landscape connectivity and how it may alter global biodiversity redistribution under rapid environmental change. This workshop will explore how best to model connectivity of both habitat- and climate-analogs. Along the way, we will discuss core principles in defining a species range such as adaptive potential, connectivity and climate exposure, and morphological and physiological traits that vary from contracting to leading edge of a species range. We will also discuss the common problems, assumptions, and oversights occurring in published predictions of species range redistribution.

Time	Topic
9:00-9:10	Welcome and Introductions

Backfround and Motivation

Time	Topic
9:10-10:00	Connectivity and species on the move
10:00-10:15	The state of connectivity modeling using R and other software
10:15-10:30	Coffee break / discussion

Markov chains, connectivity, and the SAMC framework

Time	Topic
10:30-11:00	An introduction to the SAMC and the samc package
11:00-11:15	Relationships with other connectivity frameworks
11:15-11:30	R activity—contrasting the SAMC and circuit theory
11:30-12:00	Lunch break

Building a connectivity model with the SAMC

Time	Topic
12:00-12:30	An introduction to the SAMC and the samc package
12:30-1:00	Building and tuning a SAMC model
1:00-1:30	Spatial networks and the SAMC
1:30-1:45	Coffee break / discussion

Advanced topics

Time	Topic
1:45-2:00	Modeling dispersal kernels with the SAMC
2:00-2:30	Movement ecology and the SAMC
2:30-3	Dynamic models for connectivity and species redistribution
3-3:30	Scaling models to large regions
3:30-4:00	Discussion of applications and conclusions

Friday May 19th
1pm - 6pm
Introductory meeting during the week over lunch (TBD)

Creating your own downscaled future climate data for ecological applications using CHELSA CMIP6

Lead organizer: Dirk Nikolaus Karger, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research WSL.

In order to predict the future response of species to climate change, climate prediction data are essential. With the release of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6), a large amount of new data has become available. CMIP6 includes a much larger number of climate models, socio-economic scenarios and experiments than its predecessor, CMIP5. However, these data are generally too coarse compared to the spatial detail needed for most ecological studies. Many applications that study the impact of climate on species do not require the full range of variables, models, or SSPs that CMIP6 can provide, but rather a high resolution of 1 km. Furthermore, they often rely on only a limited number of so-called bioclimatic variables, which describe averages or variations in climate over long periods of time. The CHELSA data portal already offers such downscaled CMIP6 data. However, due to the large number of possible combinations, it is very difficult to provide pre-processed, downscaled CMIP6 data for all climate and SSP models. In addition, data are only available for a limited number of time periods, which do not always coincide with the time periods required for some studies.
In this workshop, we will provide an overview of the chelsa-cmip6 Python module, which allows the creation of custom, downscaled CMIP6 bioclimate data for any region. The chelsa-cmip6 package allows you to specifically select the desired geographic extent, climate model, GCM, and time period to facilitate easy delivery of state-of-the-art climate data for ecological climate research.

After this workshop, you will be able to produce your own future 1km bioclimatic data based on the Delta Change method. The workshop will cover the following aspects.

Theory:

Overview about the theory behind downscaling and the delta change method.
Overview about the CMIP6 initiative, numerical climate modelling, the concept GCMs, ESMs, socio-economic pathways etc.
Overview of the chelsa-cmip6 module. Code structure, its classes and functions.

Practical exercise:

Creating your own future bioclimatic data for a specific time in a future.
Creating a monthly timeseries of future climate data.

Prerequisites: Although chelsa-cmip6 is written in Python, no real knowledge of Phyton is required to use it, but some basic knowledge of Python may be beneficial to take full advantage of the module. However, you should know how to use the terminal or command line interpreter of your computer.

Sunday May 14, 2023
9 am - 5 pm

Important Note: This workshop is a two part workshop with Part 1 workshop being led by Mireia Valle. In the early afternoon of Sunday, Part 2 will be led by Saras Windecker (University of Melbourne) and David Uribe-Rivera (CSIRO Australia) and provide an overview of model-based data integration for modeling species’ distributions.

SDM Part 2

Theory and practice of model-based data integration for modeling species’ distributions

Workshop Leads: Saras Windecker, University of Melbourne, sm.windecker@unimelb.edu.au
David Uribe-Rivera, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, de.uribe.r@gmail.com

To make the most accurate prediction of a species’ distribution it is important to make use of all relevant data. Although opportunistically collected species records are more readily abundant, they also contain lower quality information and are more likely to be biased. Standardised surveys may suffer less observation bias, but they are expensive to conduct and are therefore more likely to have limited spatial extent. Combining opportunistic and standardised data not only gives more information to a model, but also provides a chance for structured survey data to help correct biases in opportunistic data. Model-based data integration allows us to explicitly model the ecological (species’ occupancy/abundance) and observational processes (detection/sampling effort) simultaneously, propagating information contained in each while accounting for appropriate biases. In this skills showcase we will explain the concepts behind model-based data integration, demonstrate its implementation in a Bayesian framework for modeling species’ distributions, and practice with a number of exercises. Our examples will use broad spatial-scale presence-only data and spatial abundance data from structured surveys, and will illustrate how Point process models can be used to facilitate this integration. We expect that participants will leave more confident in the theory and execution of integrated models.