Introduction

Early Bird Registration for the EFI 2024 Conference ends on March 15, 2024!EFI 2024 Conference
Date: June 11-13, 2024
Location: Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland

This 3-day community-wide EFI meeting on 11-13 June 2024 aims at bringing together scientists, agencies, industry, and stakeholders to build a community of practice and to advance research, applications, and collaboration around near-term (subdaily to decadal) ecological forecasts. Find conference details and links to register on the EFI 2024 Conference webpage, https://bit.ly/efi2024.
In preparation for the EFI 2024 Conference the EFI DEI working group is leading a book club to read Stolen by Sámi author Ann-Helén Laestadius. While the novel is based in Sweden, it centers the Sámi people who live across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. In April of this year, Netflix will be releasing a film adaptation of Stolen, which could provide additional opportunities for discussion.
The book club will meet weekly in May 2024 (exact dates and times TBD based on participant availability). If you are interested in joining, email info@ecoforecast.org by April 13, 2024 to be added to the email list and receive a poll to schedule calls.
Save the Date! European EFI Chapter General AssemblyThe European Chapter (EEFI) is hosting a half-day General Assembly to bring the European forecasting community together before the EFI 2024 Conference to introduce a newly elected EEFI Steering Committee and to discuss the EEFI strategic plan, governance and operations, working group opportunities, and plans for upcoming events. Details about the General Assembly are available on the EFI 2024 Conference webpage.
We are in the third round of the Statistical Methods Webinar series co-hosted by EFI and the ESA Statistical Ecology Section.

On April 15 at noon US Eastern time Dr. Tati Micheletti will present on SpaDES: a flexible tool to PERFICT your workflow. Register for the call at https://bit.ly/438b57i.

SpaDES (Spatial Discrete Event Simulation) provides a standardized and yet flexible format for integrating spatial-temporal models in a modular fashion. Dr. Micheletti will explain what SpaDES is, show examples of how it can help speed-up scientific developments, and demonstrate a simple example of model integration using SpaDES.

Each seminar is 1.5 hour in length and is led by an invited speaker with expertise on a given topic or statistical method. Speakers spend the first part of the webinar presenting a project where they used the method, followed by sharing R code or packages related used for the statistical method. Presenters walk through the code, taking time to describe common pitfalls or stumbling blocks for performing the method and visualizing results.

After the April seminar, the final call in this series is in May on the wsyn R package.
European EFI Chapter Monthly SeminarsThe European EFI Chapter (EEFI) is hosting monthly seminars. The next call is on 13 March 2024 at 1pm CET.

Dr. Maria Paniw (Spanish National Research Council), “Predictive ecology needs dynamic life cycle analyses integrated in time and space.” The recording will be made available shortly.

Details about the Maria's talk, other speakers, links to register for upcoming calls, and recordings from previous presentations can be found on the Seminars webpage on the EEFI website.
Oceania EFI Chapter Monthly SeminarsThe Oceania EFI Chapter (OEFI) is hosting monthly seminars. The schedule for 2024 is now available!

12 March 2024 – 4:00pm (Sydney time); Canceled
8 May 2024 – 3:00pm (Sydney time); Anna Richards (CSIRO),
Register Here
22 July 2024 – 4:00pm (Sydney time); Whitney Woelmer (University of Waikato),
Register Here
30 September 2024 – 4:00pm (Sydney time);
Register Here
26 November 2024 – 4:00pm (Sydney time);
Register Here

Details about previous presentations, links to register for upcoming calls, and recordings from previous presentations can be found on the OEFI webpage.
Short Course Resource AvailableThe Canadian EFI Chapter hosted a week-long short course in July 2023 titled “Forecasting for Decision-Making: An Epidemiological & Ecological Perspective"


The main purpose of this course was to build skills for producing more reliable and decision-relevant forecasts. In the spirit of having the course be as open as possible, the course materials are available including lectures, exercises, and forecast modelling materials for three case studies: Infectious Disease Control, Fisheries Management, Water Quality Monitoring. The playlist of the lectures is available on the EFI YouTube channel here and the exercises and case study materials are on GitHub here.
The EFI-NEON Research Coordination Network is an NSF-funded grant to create a community of practice that builds capacity for ecological forecasting by leveraging NEON data products. Forecasts can be submitted to any of the Challenge themes: terrestrial carbon and water fluxes, plant phenology, aquatic surface temperature, oxygen, and chlorophyll-a, tick populations, and beetle communities.

Find more details about participating in the Challenge or using it for classroom instruction at neon4cast.org.
About: Mission Statement, Shared Values & Principles, Member Profiles and Forecasting Projects
Working Groups Organized Around Seven Cross-Cutting Themes: Theory; Statistical Methods & Tools; Cyberinfrastructure; Education; Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; Translation and Actionable Science; Standards for Forecast Output and Metadata
Resources: Publications, Educational and Multimedia Resources, Videos
Stay Connected: Our Listserv shares high-level announcements, our Blog highlights forecasting activities going on, you can follow us on Twitter @ecoforecast, or you can request to join our community of forecasters on Slack (send request to eco4cast.initiative@gmail.com)