EFI at the Ecological Society of America 2024 Conference

Date: July 25, 2023

EFI is excited about the opportunity to connect with the broader ecological forecasting community through a number of events at ESA in Long Beach, California this year! Below are details about the EFI Social, a workshop about the NEON Forecasting Challenge, multiple sessions organized by EFI and others about forecasting EFI-organized and other forecasting, and a Career Central panel. If you are presenting an ecological forecasting-related talk or poster that you don’t see on the list, reach out so we can get it added to this list!

We will again have EFI badges to add to your name tags!
We will continue to make updates to this page prior to ESA. All times listed below are in US Pacific Time.

EFI Badges

We will have EFI badges that can be attached to the ESA name tags available for individuals who are part of the Ecological Forecasting Initiative community. Find Mike Dietze throughout the week or at the EFI Social on Wednesday to get a badge and look for others with the green badge!

Schedule Summary

Schedule Details

EFI Social
Wednesday, August 7 at 6:30-8:30 PM

Connect and network with others in the EFI community over food, including vegan and vegetarian options at The Auld Dubliner. The Auld Dubliner is just 400 feet from the Convention Center.

Workshop:  An Introduction to the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge: A Hands-On Example Using Ground Beetle Abundance and Richness
Thursday, August 8 at 11:45 AM – 1:15 PM; Location: 104B

This workshop will provide an overview of the EFI RCN NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge theme forecasting ground beetle abundance and richness across NEON terrestrial sites. The workshop will include code-along instructions to help participants create and submit a simple forecast to the Forecasting Challenge platform as well as interpret metrics of forecast skill. Participants will gain a foundation that can be built upon to create more sophisticated predictions about ecological communities and use the EFI RCN resources in future forecasting applications.

EFI Organized Oral Session: Ecological Forecasting for Research and Decision Making
Tuesday. August 6 at 8-9:30 AM; Location 104C

Contributed Oral Session: Back and Forecasting in Ecology
Tuesday, August 6 at 10:00-11:30 AM; Location: 102C

Organized Oral Session: What is Model Complexity? Defining Complexity Across Systems in Ecology
Tuesday, August 6 at 10:00-11:30 AM; Location: 101A

This session, organized by Charlotte Malmborg (Boston University) and R. Alex Thompson (Washington State University), has been in the works since ESA 2023 with conversations about the then-blog post, now-published paper about model complexity (https://doi.org/10.1002/met.2202). There will be an audience discussion following the panelists and it would be great to have fellow forecasters join that discussion.

Organized Oral Session: Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity Through the Lens of Climate-Explicit Demographic Modeling
Thursday, August 8 at 8:00-9:30 AM; Location: 104A

Special Session: Toward Understanding and Anticipating Extreme Weather Effects on Biodiversity, Phenology, and Ecosystems
Monday, August 5 at 10:30-11:30 AM; Location: 104C

Extreme weather events, including heat waves, droughts, flooding, and unusual cold periods, are a major component of global climate change. Despite increases in the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events, direct and indirect effects on biodiversity, phenology, and ecosystem services remain poorly understood. Assessing and anticipating impacts of extreme weather presents unique obstacles across systems, geographies, and scales. Key challenges include availability of and accessibility to relevant data resources, development of methods and approaches to characterize extreme weather events, and obstacles to predicting and forecasting. Solutions require multidisciplinary collaborations across the ecological community to develop effective tools and resources to address these challenges. We propose a session to convene a panel of experts spanning multiple career stages in the fields of biodiversity informatics, plant and insect phenology, and vector borne disease systems to discuss key challenges to understanding and anticipating extreme weather effects across organisms, phenology, and ecosystems. Session hosts will provide a talk outlining work within their field of expertise, followed by an interactive panel and audience discussion. The session will culminate in a dedicated 10-minute discussion, facilitated by the organizer, focusing on facilitating cross-disciplinary collaborations to leverage knowledge and approaches applicable to addressing challenges across domains.  

Speakers: Robert Guralnick (University of Florida), Michael Belitz (Michigan State University), Daijiang Li (Louisiana State University), Assaf Anyamba (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

Organized Oral Session: Collaborative Conservation in the Face of Changing Climate
Thursday, August 8 at 8:00-9:30 AM; Location: 104B

Career Central – The Ecology Entrepreneur: Insights from Industry Leaders
Monday, Aug 5 at noon-1pm, Location: Exhibit Hall Career Central Room 1

Join this insightful session with founders of ecological organizations, consulting services, and innovative initiatives. Panelists are entrepreneurs who have demonstrated initiative, leadership, and innovation in creating and leading their communities of practice. If you identify with these qualities, you too can become an entrepreneur.

Panelists: Tim Nuttle (Oikos Ecology), Michael Dietze (Ecological Forecasting initiative), Shah Selbe (Conservify and FieldKit)

Posted in ESA

EFI at the Ecological Society of America 2023 Conference

Date: July 26, 2023

EFI is excited about the opportunity to connect with the broader community through a number of events at ESA in Portland this year! Below are details about a workshop about the NEON Forecasting Challenge, the EFI Social, and the EFI organized oral session. Other ecological forecasting talks are also listed.
For the first time, we will also have EFI badges to add to your name tags!
We will continue to make updates to this page prior to ESA. All times listed below are in US Pacific Time.

EFI Badges

We will have EFI badges that can be attached to the ESA name tags available for individuals who are part of the Ecological Forecasting Initiative community. Find Mike Dietze or Anna Sjodin during the Conference or at the EFI-sponsored Organized Oral Session on Tuesday or the EFI Social on Wednesday to get a badge and look for others with the green badge!

EFI Social
Wednesday, August 9 at 6:30-8:00 PM

Meet up with others in the EFI community on Wednesday evening, August 9 from 6:30-8:00 pm at the Cartside Food Carts. Cartside has a range of food and drink options and is a less than 15-minute walk from the Convention Center.

Workshop:  Can You Predict the Future? Introducing the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge
Monday, August 7 at 11:45 AM – 1:15 PM; Location: C124

Freya Olsson (Virginia Tech) will be leading this 90-minute workshop that will be of interest to the EFI community. The workshop is perfect for those who want to know more about getting involved in the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge and will provide participants with materials and information to get them started. The primary goals of the session are to 1) introduce the Challenge and forecast themes; 2) familiarize participants with Challenge documentation as well as easy-to-use software, tools, and templates that have been developed in the R programming language; and 3) and facilitate participants in submitting their own forecast to the Challenge! We will provide a template forecasting workflow in R, using the daily terrestrial fluxes of carbon and evaporation theme as an example (neon4cast.org), and provide assistance to participants to set up their own forecasts. You can make sure you are ready to go for the workshop by looking at the draft materials here.

If you have questions about the workshop or set up instructions, please email freyao@vt.edu.

EFI Organized Oral Session: Ecological Forecasting: Applications, Discoveries, and Opportunities
Tuesday, August 8 at 1:30-3:00 PM; Location: 256

Other Forecasting Presentations

If you are presenting an ecological forecasting-related talk or poster that you don’t see on the list, reach out so we can get it added!

Monday, August 7

Tuesday, August 8

Wednesday, August 9

Thursday, August 10