Schedule

Fall 2025

Tue + Thu, 2pm – 3:15pm

CGS 421 (871 Commonwealth Ave.)

Day	Topic	Readings
Tue 9/2	Syllabus day	slides
Thu 9/4	Conservation priorities: data & methods Lab: data visualization & processing in QGIS	Jenkins et al. 2015a Brown et al. 2015 Jenkins et al. 2015b slides
Tue 9/9	python for data science: syntax & guidelines Lab 1.1 due	A Byte of Python (Basics to Functions) Data Structures
Thu 9/11	Tabular data: pandas and matplotlib	10 Minutes to pandas Intro to data structures
Tue 9/16	Vector data: geopandas Lab 1.2 due	Geopandas 1.1.1
Thu 9/18	Raster data: rasterio and GDAL Lab 1.3 due on Friday	rasterio: Quickstart Reference: GDAL
Tue 9/23	Valuing ecosystem services: key concepts	Goulder & Kennedy 2011 Optional: DEFRA slides
Thu 9/25	Valuing ecosystem services: examples & tools Lab 1.4 due
Tue 9/30	Systematic conservation planning (SCP): theory, methods, and tools Lab 1-5 due	Game et al. 2013 InVEST user guide: study one model in detail. Optional: Giakoumi et al. 2025
Thu 10/2	Systematic conservation planning with Marxan Last week to drop the class without a “W” grade	Marxan User Manual (Sections 1.1-1.8) slides
Tue 10/7	Building your own Marxan dataset Lab 2.1 due
Thu 10/9	Conservation policy instruments: an overview of common strategies	slides
Tue 10/14	No class: Substitute Monday schedule after Indigenous Peoples’ Day Lab 2.2 due
Thu 10/16	Explaining conservation costs with statsmodels Lab 2.3 due on Friday	Newburn et al. 2006 see Lab 3.1 for guidance slides
Tue 10/21	Predicting conservation costs with scikit-learn: cross-validation Prospectus due	slides
Thu 10/23	Predicting conservation costs with scikit-learn: tree ensembles	Optional (on algorithms): ERT: Geurts et al. 2006 GB: Natekin & Knoll 2013
Tue 10/28	Predicting conservation costs (continued)
Thu 10/30	Simulating the cost-effectiveness of policy strategies Lab 2 test (postponed from 10/23) Lab 3.1 due on Friday	Newburn et al. 2006 see Lab 3.2 for guidance
Tue 11/4	Simulating the cost-effectiveness of policy strategies (continued)
Thu 11/6	Rigorous impact evaluation: framework and methods Lab 3.2 due on Friday	Ferraro 2009 slides
Tue 11/11	Rigorous impact evaluation: matching	Ferraro & Hanauer 2014
Thu 11/13	Rigorous impact evaluation: matching exercise I	Intro to R, Ho et al. 2007
Tue 11/18	Rigorous impact evaluation: matching exercise II Project plan due
Thu 11/20	Rigorous impact evaluation: matching exercise III Lab 3 test
Tue 11/25	Class project workshop Lab 4 due
Thu 11/27	No class: Thanksgiving
Tue 12/2	Project meetings or bonus lab: interactive mapping Lab 4 test
Thu 12/4	Project meetings or bonus lab: 3D visualization
Tue 12/9	Wrap-Up Final report due
Thu 12/16	No final exam