When Assistant Professor June Tantipisanuh saw the EcoCommons team present at the ISMB conference last year, she immediately recognised the value the platform could bring to colleagues at her home institution.
Inspired by its potential, she invited the team to deliver a dedicated workshop at King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (Bang Khun Thian), Thailand.
Consequently, On 19 January 2026, Xiang Zhao, Software Developer and R Specialist, and Ryan Newis, Data Scientist (Ecological modelling)/Software Developer from the Sustainable Futures Team at QCIF Digital Research, delivered a week-long EcoCommons workshop hosted by the Conservation Ecology Program at King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (Bang Khun Thian).
The workshop brought together academic staff, students and NGO partners from across the region, providing them with practical and foundational species distribution modelling (SDM) skills and showcasing how the EcoCommons platform can be used to advance conservation efforts in the region.
Ryan and Zhao guided participants through end-to-end SDM workflows — from sourcing and preparing species occurrence and environmental data, through model selection, fitting and evaluation, to interpreting and reporting results for real-world conservation and land management decisions.
Combining expert-led presentations with hands-on lab sessions, the workshop enabled participants to apply new skills directly to their own research and projects.
Reflections from the facilitators
Zhao’s reflection
“It was an intensive but incredibly rewarding week. We had nearly 30 participants representing NGOs and universities, working across a wide range of terrestrial and marine systems, species, and spatial scales — from birds and fishing cats to Asian elephants, dugongs, seagrass, and Burmese star tortoises — spanning Southeast Asia.
Participants brought diverse perspectives from research, policy, and community-based conservation. Through this workshop and the EcoCommons platform, our goal was to make species distribution modelling practical and accessible for ecologists and conservation practitioners, reducing common barriers around coding, computation, and GIS. I believe we achieved this, at least in part.”‑based conservation. Through this workshop and the EcoCommons platform, our goal was to make species distribution modelling practical and accessible for ecologists and conservation practitioners, reducing common barriers around coding, computation, and GIS. I believe we achieved this, at least in part.”
Ryan’s reflection
“Our first week‑long SDM/EcoCommons workshop, hosted at KMUTT’s Bangkhuntian Campus, was a major milestone.
The workshop walked participants through the full SDM workflow — from data acquisition and preparation to model building, evaluation, and reporting — and the experience was especially rewarding given the diversity of attendees. We had recent graduates, senior researchers, and conservation practitioners from NGOs, with participants joining from Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar. Co-delivering with my colleague Xiang Zhao helped foster a highly collaborative learning environment.‑delivering with my colleague Xiang Zhao helped foster a highly collaborative learning environment.
A key highlight was seeing how quickly participants moved from theory to applied modelling when supported with clear and transparent workflows. One of the most gratifying moments was watching groups present their final projects — each selecting a target species, building datasets, interpreting model outputs, and discussing how their findings could support conservation actions in their regions.
Professionally and personally, developing and delivering this workshop in an international setting was enormously fulfilling. We hope to build on the strong relationships formed with participants and the broader KMUTT community to further advance SDM capability and promote EcoCommons as a practical tool for conservation across the region.”
Assist. Prof. Naruemon Tantipisanuh’s reflection
Dr Naruemon Tantipisanuh (June) was the key facilitator and organising representative from the Conservation Ecology Program at KMUTT.
"I've been working with species distribution modelling (SDM) for many years using R. I must admit, R has a steep learning curve, making it quite challenging without substantial experience. Mapping SDM results also requires GIS skills, which aren't easy to acquire. The EcoCommons platform addresses these hurdles beautifully—it simplifies SDM workflows and produces output maps with ease.
That said, without a solid understanding of SDM fundamentals, even EcoCommons can't deliver reliable results. Models might run, but their credibility would suffer. Zhao and Ryan excelled here. Over the five-day workshop in Thailand, they built our foundational knowledge from the ground up: data types, method selection based on study objectives, limitations of each approach, result interpretation, and model accuracy assessment. They then guided us step-by-step through popular methods like MaxEnt and GLM on the EcoCommons platform, from setup to final interpretation. By the end, everyone felt confident applying it to their own work.
What impressed me most was their responsiveness. For questions beyond the prepared scope, they'd research and follow up the next day. They even noted our requests for new features and committed to adding them to future platform updates.
Zhao and Ryan are exceptional teachers too—their classes were engaging and never dull. They broke down complex concepts into digestible explanations, often using helpful graphics in their slides.
In short, I'm thrilled to have arranged and attended this workshop. I had an amazing five days and look forward to deeper collaboration between KMUTT and QCIF!"
Looking ahead
The EcoCommons team hopes this workshop will open the door to future international engagement opportunities, expanding our community of practice and strengthening SDM capacity across the globe.
We would like to thank QCIF Digital Research, the ARDC, TERN and KMUTT for supporting this workshop.
To learn more about EcoCommons Australia, visit the website or join us at an upcoming Hacky Hour.
EcoCommons is a co-investment partnership with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) through the Planet Research Data Commons (DOI: doi.org/10.3565/chbq-mr75). The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
