- Week 1 - Fundamentals of radar science and biodiversity research
- This first week of content will give you a basic understanding of radar science and biodiversity science. At the end of the week, we will bring the two research areas together and consider how they can inform one another. In the second week, we will explore the more technical aspects of radar aeroecology. We will look at the important and neglected questions that radar can address in biodiversity science, and how radar data can complement other sources of information about the natural world. You will end week 2 with an opportunity to generate your own research idea that builds on your new understanding.
- Week 2 - Advantages and limits of aeroecology in context
- Welcome to week two of this course on Aeroecology: exploring biodiversity with radar. In week one of the course, you were introduced to the fundamentals of radar science and biodiversity research, then we brought the two together to explore how the two disciplines can work together to generate biological information from radar data. Week two will develop that initial overview to examine some of the key gaps in our understanding of ecosystems.
We will start by looking at how we measure abundance in biodiversity research, and why this is important in an ecological context. We will then move on to look at the importance of measuring diversity, and the extent to which radar is able to do so. I will illustrate these abundance and diversity topics with a range of case studies to show you how radar is currently being applied in some areas. In the final part of the course, we will take a step back and survey the field for future opportunities. The optional assessment involves you as learners becoming practitioners yourselves and exploring these opportunities to find a research area that might be of interest to you.
