The Columbia Region Ecological Discussions include speakers addressing a diversity of topics such as science communication, active ecological management, citizen science, research skills and techniques, and applied ecological research projects. Talk recordings are posted on their web page and available on our YouTube channel here.

Automated recording technology and software has grown immensely in usability and popularity in the last decade. Many biologists are attracted to the technology to increase data capture, lower cost to capture, reduce observer effect, increase surveyor safety, and capture field data that can be revisited. First-time bioacoustical surveys can seem intimidating with high initial cost...

An introduction to the programming language R, presented by CMI. This course will provide tips and tricks to programming in R, installation of R packages and libraries, introduction to base R objects and data types, assign a value to a name, identify functions, for loops, and conditional statements, read in data from common file types...

Presented by the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology, this online eight-day online course with Joe Thorley is for natural resource managers who have to interpret the results of statistical analyses and make decisions about how much data to collect and which management actions to undertake. The course focuses on the fundamentals of uncertainty, modeling,...

Presented by the Columbian Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology, this course will cover procedures for observing, measuring, and describing soils in the field. The goal is to produce consistent data for soil inventory, mapping and classification using techniques that improve the consistency of determining soil properties in the field. Students will gain experience with describing...

Presented by the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology, this course will introduce students to the BC Classification system of wetlands and the Canadian Wetland Classification System, providing them with an overview of how to classify and delineate wetlands and the differences between using these systems. The course will start with a classroom session learning...

This course presented by Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology 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...

Presented by the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology, this online course with Ayla Pearson will provide students with the tools they need to effectively tidy, transform and visualize their data in R. This course will teach the theory behind tidy data, setting up a reproducible data pipeline, introduction in the tidyverse suite of packages,...

The Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology (CMI) hosts an annual event where they gather members of the scientific community, Indigenous community members and representatives, stewardship groups, and interested individuals to provide updates on ecological projects taking place in southeastern British Columbia – everything from field trials, new restoration projects and their associated community initiatives,...

This online course presented by the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology will provide tips and tricks to programming in R, installation of R packages and libraries, introduction to base R objects and data types, assign a value to a name, identify functions, for loops, and conditional statements, read in data from common file types...