This five-day training course, organized by the FRB-CESAB aims to initiate ecologists to AI concepts and tools. The course will be a mix of lectures and hands-on practice based on different data types commonly encountered in ecology. The main objective of the course is to give to the participants the autonomy that will allow them to assess which algorithms are most adapted to their own research questions, where to find them and how to adjust them to the desired question.

Program

Monday 19 May 2025 – 9:00 am: Introduction

Presentation of the course and speakers

Introduction to AI: historical background

Introduction to Python environment and tools

Data science in Python

Tuesday 20 May 2025 – Machine learning 1

Linear and general regression : from a ML perspective

Random forest and K-means

Practical concepts and practice

Wednesday 21 May 2025 – Machine learning 2

Dataset selection

Supervised learning

Unsupervised learning

Dimensionality reduction

Thursday 22 May 2025 – Deep learning

DL concepts

Practices with PlantNet

Friday 23 May 2025 – Symbolic AI

Introduction

Practice: Designing protected areas in New Caledonia

Practice: Crop rotation planning

Feedback time and conclusion

Prerequisites

You must have a strong programming background, at least in R.

Familiarity with Python is preferred, but not mandatory. In fact, to make sure that we all start on similar bases, we require that you follow these tutorials before attending the training course.

https://www.learnpython.org/

Under the “Learn the basics”, please go through all the following pages:

• Hello, World!

• Variables and Types

• Lists

• Basic Operators

• String Formatting

• Basic String Operations

• Conditions

• Loops

• Functions

• Classes and Objects

• Dictionaries

• Modules and Packages

• Input and Output

Each section allows you to interact with a built-in Python console where you can copy/paste and edit the commands. The sections end with a small exercise, which we recommend you do. You may navigate from one section to the other by clicking on the “next tutorial” button (you don’t have to take the test – but are welcome to if you enjoy it)

We will not control whether you followed the tutorial, but trust that you will to collectively ensure the group has a common base to start from

Material

All the material used in this training course (slides, data, exercises) is available at: https://github.com/ai-ecol/

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Sakina Ayata for comments and advice in the set-up of this training course, to Nicolas Casajus for constant conceptual and technical support. Thanks to Maija Miikkola for all the logistical and administrative help, and to Violette Silve for the visual support on the FRB website.

Citation

Blondel L, Bourel B, Challand M, Coux C, Justea-Allaire D, Frelat R, Servajean M, Tresson P. (2025) AI for ecologists: a toolkit for beginners. An FRB-CESAB training course. URL: https://ai-ecol.github.io/

Contributions

If you see mistakes or want to suggest changes, please create an issue on the source repository.

Reuse

Text and figures are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution CC By 4.0, unless otherwise noted.

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