The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy, together with the OGS (National Institute for Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics), Trieste, Italy, will organize a School on Recent Advances in Analysis of Multivariate Ecological Data: Theory and Practice from 24^th to 28^th October 2016. The School will be co-sponsored by the International Union of Geodesy & Geophysics (IUGG), and the International Society for Ecological Modelling.

The school aims to provide both, the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to perform advanced analysis of physical, environmental and ecological data, and to provide a bridge between theory and practice. Ecosystems are facing cumulative impacts of a variety of stressors (e.g. pollution, climate change, exploitation of natural resources, invasive species) that can potentially alter their state and functionality and possibly adversely impact both, human health and nature’s own capability to provide goods and services. To tackle with these challenges, a large number of institutional monitoring programs and of research projects have been launched, so that the amount of available experimental information is steadily increasing. However, there is still a substantial lack in the capabilities to use advanced quantitative methods to analyze these data and to plan more efficient data collection for the future. A proper analysis of the data requires a full understanding of the theoretical assumptions used in the analysis, so to guide the choice of the proper methodologies. Moreover, practical skills are needed to fully exploit the possibilities of appropriate data analysis software.