1. Welcome and introduction to the course: Importance of biodiversity monitoring and main existing programs
2. Monitoring: Consequences of biodiversity loss.
3. Monitoring: Introduction to experimental design.
4: Monitoring: Hypothesis testing and analysis of ecological data through ANOVA.
5. Taxonomy of intertidal organisms: a quick overview
6. Field trips to the shore Methods of monitoring: destructive and non-destructive sampling.
7. Rocky shores: Some background information & key concepts on monitoring techniques.
8. Sorting of samples and identification of organisms.
9. Field trips to the shore: Designing a spatial-explicit monitoring program.
10. Analyses of the collected data. Introduction to the use and of uni-variate and multivariate community descriptors.
11. Uni-variate and multivariate community descriptors: analysis using Permanova & other software.
12. Practical exercises.
13. Evaluation.
No specific competences needed, but students would likely benefit from previous basic knowledge on experimental design, taxonomy of intertidal organisms and principles of monitoring programs.
Practical knowledge of ecological experimental design
Knowledge of taxonomy of intertidal organisms
Pratical skills on designing monitoring programs to detect impacts in natural systems.