2025 - Biodiversity Modelling Summer School

This annual Summer School will give you the opportunity to further your knowledge of Biodiversity Modelling, in an informal and friendly atmosphere. The 2025 edition will be on the theme “Coding biodiversity: building scenarios with a global ecosystem model”.

Presentation

In our current context, it is urgent that ecologists are trained to project scenarios of future biodiversity. Such biodiversity scenarios, predicting extinctions, community changes and alterations and ecosystem functioning could radically transform our society, like climate change scenarios did. The reputation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change largely builds on robust general circulation models, simulating the physics and chemistry of the planet. It has been proposed that general ecosystem models could inform policy decisions and improve our understanding of biodiversity and its functioning. Developing such models is however a daunting task that could only be achieved in team.

The general objective of this edition of the Summer School in biodiversity modelling will be to investigate the joint effects of biodiversity changes and climate change on ecosystem functioning using a custom version of the Madingley model. Students will learn how to collaborate in a complex coding problem with an inter-disciplinary team, and we encourage people with diverse backgrounds to apply and compose this inter-disciplinary teams.

Themes

• Modelling scenarios for decision makers
• Ecological forecasting
• Unifying ecology across scales
• Data pipelines
• Communicating biodiversity changes for decision makers

Instructors

• Dominique Gravel, professor at Université de Sherbrooke
• Vincent Beauregard, research coordinator and developer at Université de Sherbrooke

With the participation of:

• Dr. Ceres Barros, Climate Change Research Ecologist
• Dr. Mary O'Connor, professor at the University of British Columbia
• Dr. Sarah Otto, professor at the University of British Columbia
• And other guest speakers

Event information

• Date: August 18 to 22, 2025
• Location: University of British Columbia, Vancouver Campus, British Columbia – Canada
• Registration fee: $600 (without accommodation), $950 (with accommodation)

Registration fees and financial assistance

The registration fee of $600 includes course registration, coffee breaks, lunches and 3 dinners.

The registration fee of $950 includes course registration, food for 5 days and accommodation (private or shared room on campus). Travel costs are not included.

Members of certain programs or groups may be eligible for financial assistance:

• BIOS² will reimburse registration fees for program members
• QCBS will reimburse 50% of registration fees for its members
• Living Data Project (LDP) will support up to 3 student members enrolled in a university affiliated to the program and having completed an internship or working group

Prerequisites

This course is intended for students and professionals from all sectors.

For all applicants:

• Minimum intermediate proficiency level in English; proficiency in French is an asset (listening and speaking)
• Eligible to study in Canada (i.e., have the appropriate visa or be exempt from this requirement to enrol on a University course)

For applicants focused on developing biodiversity models:

• Basic knowledge of biodiversity modelling
• Upper-intermediate level of knowledge in scientific programming (the program will have a focus on R language, but you can use the language of your choice)
• Familiarity with version control systems (we’ll provide advanced training)

For applicants focused on communicating biodiversity models:

• Familiarity with biodiversity topics
• Skills in data visualization, and/or communication and outreach in different media

Registration

Anyone interested in taking part in the summer school must complete the form by July 1st, 2025.

Applications will be reviewed to ensure that the prerequisites are met. If the number of applications is too high, a selection of applications will be made. Official registration (admission and payment of registration fees) will take place during the week of June 30, 2025.

The Biodiversity Modelling Summer School is presented as part of BIOS², a NSERC-CREATE training program in Computational Biodiversity Science and Services, and by Université de Sherbrooke, with the support of the Quebec Center for Biodiversity Science (QCBS), the Living Data Project, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.

• Contact us​​​​​​​