This course has been timed to follow the IPRRG 2024 meeting, allowing a weekend’s rest in between the IPRRG meeting and the CLIMEX course.

This is an introductory course, designed to provide biologists and risk assessors with the skills to produce CLIMEX models.

Outcomes of Training

  • Appreciation of the conceptual basis of CLIMEX
  • Provision of a context for field studies
  • Inference of species’ climatic requirements from their distributions
  • Inference of geographical and seasonal climatic suitability, length of growing season, number of generations per year, nature of limiting effects
  • Skills in operating CLIMEX software

Method of presentation

  • 4 x 8 hour face to face sessions
  • Each participant will receive a temporary licence to the CLIMEX and DYMEX software.  This can be installed on a Windows PC, or Apple Macbook running Parallels with a windows Virtual machine.
  • Each participant needs to complete a brief, targeted literature review on a case study organism before commencing the course.  It should take a maximum of two days to assemble the material.  Information will be provided to guide you on this task.

Course Content

  • A series of lectures interspersed with hands-on tutorials
  • At the beginning, there is more lecture content
  • As the course progresses, you are provided with less guidance with the hands-on material
  • The exercises and examples are mostly centered on Australia.  To aid you with placenames, a map is provided at the end of the Tutorial Booklet
  • By the end of the course you should be able to fit your own model for a case study organism
  • Typically, there will be a small number of parameters that you do not feel confident in assigning a value to because there are uncertainties or inconsistencies between model, data or theory
  • Don’t panic.  Resolving these issues will likely require some detective work

Course Programme

  • Overview and Match Climates
  • The CLIMEX Model
    • Compare Locations
    • Compare Years
    • Compare Locations/Years
    • Species Fitting
  • MetManager
  • MapManager Version 2
  • Sensitivity and Uncertainty
  • Own Species Fitting
  • Genetic Algorithm

Presenter

Prof. Darren Kriticos is the current developer of the software and has nearly 30 years of experience with using it as a research tool.

Refreshments

Lunch and light refreshments will be provided

Duration

4 days, Monday 23 – Thursday 26 September 2024

Location

University of Malaga
Instituto de Hortofruticultura Subtropical y Mediterránea “La Mayora”
Campus Universidad de Malaga Teatinos (UMA-CSIC)
Bulevar Louis Pasteur, 49
29010 Málaga (España)

A link to a google map of the institute. The institute is easily accessible via the metro system.

Accommodation

Accommodation is available at a wide variety of hotels in Malaga.

Cost

€1,300.00

Registration and payment

To reserve your place, please use this link to pay by Airwallex using a credit/debit card:https://pay.airwallex.com/hkgxu1tfvqyq

Refund policy

A 90% refund can be provided until 6 September 2024.

Questions

Please use the Contact form here.