Advanced Occupancy Modeling

This course is aimed at participants that have completed the introductory-level course, or have suitable practical experience implementing species occurrence models that account for imperfect detection. In this course, learn the underlying theory of multi-scale, multi-state, species co-occurrence, and community level models and then put your new knowledge into practice. All hands-on exercises will be conducted in R, covering data analysis and presentation of results (plotting results, creating maps, etc.). This course was recorded during a live workshop in March 2024 at the University of Maine. You will have 3 months of access to course materials as you work at your own pace. 

Learn at your your own pace without instructor support.

Summer: June 2 - August 24, 2025 (Early bird ends May 4th)

Fall: September 2 – November 23, 2025 (Early bird ends August 3rd)

*Early bird saves $75

• Introduction to Occupancy Modeling or experience in RPresence

• Experienced in statistics and modeling in R (e.g., Ecological Statistics and Modeling & Generalized Models)

• Experience with JAGS for fitting models using Bayesian methods in R is advantageous (e.g., Intro to Bayesian Modeling in Ecology)

• Review of basic, static occupancy model: model development, covariates, creating species distribution maps

• Study design

• Correlated detection occupancy model

• Multi-scale occupancy model

• Spatial correlation in occupancy

• Static multi-state occupancy model

• False positive detection models

• Review of dynamic occupancy model

• Dynamic multi-state occupancy model

• Species co-occurrence models

• Community-level models

• Joint occupancy-habitat dynamics model

• 16 CEUs with The Wildlife Society

• Go to our Continuing Education Page for more details