NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge

Author

Ecological Forecasting Initative Research Coordination Network

Published

June 15, 2023

Introduction

Caption for the picture.

The NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge is an ongoing project and is accepting submissions across all themes!

The National Science Foundation funded Ecological Forecasting Initiative Research Coordination Network (EFI-RCN) is hosting a NEON Ecological Forecast Challenge with the goal to create a community of practice that builds capacity for ecological forecasting by leveraging NEON data products. The Challenge revolves around the five theme areas listed below that span aquatic and terrestrial systems, and population, community, and ecosystem processes across a broad range of ecoregions that uses data collected by NEON.

As a community, we are excited to learn more about the predictability of ecological processes by forecasting NEON data prior to its release. What modeling frameworks, mechanistic processes, and statistical approaches best capture community, population, and ecosystem dynamics? These questions are answerable by a community generating a diverse array of forecasts. The Challenge is open to any individual or team that wants to submit forecasts and includes categories for different career stages. Individuals or team contacts can register to submit forecasts Here

The design of the Challenge is the result of contributions of over 200 participants in the May 2020 virtual EFI-RCN meeting, including partner organizations, and the hard work from the Design Teams that have developed the protocols for each of the themes.

Computational resources are provided by NSF-funded Jetstream2

We have prepared introductory videos from the December 9, 2020 AGU EFI Town Hall. They provide an overview of the

  1. Challenge
  2. Challenge cyberinfrastructure
  3. NEON data streams

EFI-RCN Steering Committee

Lead: R. Quinn Thomas (Virginia Tech)
Program Manager: Jody Peters (University of Notre Dame)

Michael Dietze (Boston University)
Melissa Kenney (University of Minnesota)
Jason McLachlan (University of Notre Dame)
Carl Boettiger (University of California, Berkeley)
Cayelan Carey (Virginia Tech)
Leah Johnson (Virginia Tech)
NEON Representative: Eric Sokol
Student representatives: Lynda Bradley (Emory)

Past members of steering committee

Whitney Woelmer (Virginia Tech)
Alyssa Wilson (University of Notre Dame)
NEON Representative: Christine Laney
Jake Weltzin (USGS)
Andy Fox (UCAR)

Video Introducng the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge.

This video was originally recorded for the 2021 Early Career Annual Meeting