Introduction

	We are in the third round of the Statistical Methods Webinar series co-hosted by EFI and the ESA Statistical Ecology Section. Dr. Nerea Abrego (University of Jyväskylä) presented on December 6 on the HMSC R package on Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities. A recording from the presentation will be made available by December 11. See details about the call, the full schedule, and register for all the calls HERE. 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. Upcoming topics or R packages include: aniMotum, spatiotemporal modeling, SpaDES, and wsyn
Save the Date! 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 more details and updates on the EFI 2024 Conference webpage, https://bit.ly/efi2024.
Save the Date! European EFI Chapter General Assembly	The 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.
European EFI Chapter Monthly Seminars	The European EFI Chapter (EEFI) is hosting monthly seminars. The two remaining calls in 2023 are on 8 November, and 13 December at 1pm CET. Dr. Frank Pennekamp will present on 13 December at 1pm CET on "Advancing forecasts with ecological theory". Register here: https://bit.ly/3Rv1NhI. Details about the 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 Seminars	The Oceania EFI Chapter (OEFI) is hosting monthly seminars. A new schedule will be developed for 2024. On 2 November, Dr. Nicholas Clark (University of Queensland) present on "Ecological Forecasting with Dynamic Generalized Additive Models." The recording from this call is available here Details about this presentation, links to register for upcoming calls, and recordings from previous presentations can be found on the OEFI webpage.
Short Course Resource Available	The 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 begins in 2021.
	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
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