Introduction

EFI Social Science and Ecological Forecasting Seed Funding Opportunity	Based on the need to develop interdisciplinary ecological forecasting projects with social scientists to improve environmental decision making, EFI is providing $1,000 award to support five Project Groups. Funds can be used anywhere U.S. wire transfers are permitted and are not limited to career stage of EFI membership. Proposals are due August 26, 2024. Awards will be announced by September 16, 2024. Find additional details, FAQs, the application form, and criteria for evaluating proposals at: https://ecoforecast.org/social-science-ecological-forecasting-projects-rfp/
EFI2025 Conference	We are looking forward to convening the EFI community at the EFI 2025 Conference on May 19-22, 2025 at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia! Individuals are invited from academia, government agencies, industry and the non-profit sectors to come together in person to share cutting-edge research and applications in ecological forecasting broadly. There will be three days with keynote addresses, short research presentations, poster sessions, open time for networking, and a field trip into the mountains. The fourth day will be time for working group activities and training workshops. Call for session topic and speaker nominations. The organizing committee wants to hear from the community about what session topics people are most interested and potential speakers who can engagingly contribute to a discussion of that topic. Share your ideas at https://forms.gle/XovEdEJ6DizuDhXP8 through August 30, 2024.
Oceania EFI Chapter Monthly Seminars	See the Oceania EFI Chapter (OEFI) seminar list for 2024 HERE. The recording from the 22nd July 2024 presentation by Dr. Whitney Woelmer (University of Waikato) on “Process-based forecasts of lake water temperature and dissolved oxygen outperform null models, with variability over time and depth” is available at https://youtu.be/9vvLzjudaXQ The next call is on 30th September by Matt Rees (CSIRO). Title and abstract forthcoming. Register at https://bit.ly/46mLLfw
EFI 2024 Conference Student Awards	Congratulations to this year’s recipients for the EFI Futures Outstanding Student Presentation Award! Gabrielle Koerich (University of Canterbury) won for her oral presentation, “Modelling bryophyte distributions in Antarctica: unveiling the influence of water availability, sampling bias, and spatially complex dynamics” and Nima Farchadi (San Diego State University) won for his poster “Integrating diverse data for robust species distribution models in a dynamic ocean.” See details about Gabrielle and Nima's presentations here. Thank you to all the students who participated and to the volunteers who reviewed the presentations!
See the latest EFI paper!	"Defining model complexity: An ecological perspective" came out on May 17, 2024 in Meteorological Applications https://doi.org/10.1002/met.2202. This paper was written by EFI Student Association members! Congratulations to co-authors Charlotte Malmborg (Boston U), Alyssa Willson (U of Notre Dame), L.M. Bradley (Emory U), Meghan Beatty (U of Florida), Dave Klinges (U of Florida), Gerbrand Koren (Utrecht U), Abigail Lewis (Virginia Tech), Kayode Oshinubi (Northern Arizona U), and Whitney Woelmer (Virginia Tech)
EFI-USGS River Chlorophyll Forecasting Challenge	This newly launched forecasting challenge is now accepting forecast submissions for river chlorophyll. Find more information about the importance of creating forecasts for river chlorophyll, how to get involved, and who is organizing HERE. See the full description of the Challenge, submitted forecasts, and resources at: https://projects.ecoforecast.org/usgsrc4cast-ci/
European EFI Chapter Monthly Seminars	The European EFI Chapter (EEFI) is hosting monthly seminars. The recording from the 8th May 2024 call by Petteri Vihervaara (Finnish Environment Institute) on "The Essential Biodiversity Variables for improved biodiversity monitoring and modelling" is available with all the EEFI seminar recordings on the EEFI Seminars webpage The seminar series is now on hiatus until September 2024. Details about upcoming seminars will be provided closer to September.
	We have finished the third round of the Statistical Methods Webinar series co-hosted by EFI and the ESA Statistical Ecology Section. Details about the fourth round of the Webinar series will be posted once finalized as we get closer to September 2024. Recordings and resources from all the webinars are available on the Statistical Methods Seminar webpage . 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.
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.
	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)