Full Description of the Challenge, Resources, and FAQ Here

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

See this 2023 paper for an overview about the Challenge: Thomas, R.Q., C. Boettiger, C.C. Carey, M.C. Dietze, L.R. Johnson, M.A. Kenney, J.S. McLachlan, J.A. Peters, E.R. Sokol, J.F. Weltzin, A. Willson, W.M. Woelmer, and Challenge Contributors. 2023. “The NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 21 (3): 112–13. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2616.

The NSF funded EFI 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 the 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 supported by NSF funded CyVerse, Jetstream, and XSEDE.

During the EFI Unconference held June 21-23, 2023 at the NEON Headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, a number of projects supported work related to the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge. Find details about the 10 projects that were developed during the Unconference at https://bit.ly/efi-unconference-project-updates

Challenge Themes

Aquatic Ecosystems

Terrestrial Carbon and Water Fluxes

Tick Populations

Plant Phenology

Beetle Communities

Instructions for Submitting Forecasts and Forecast Evaluation Details Here

Overview of Cyberinfrastructure used in the Challenge

Version 1 of the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge Protocols

Thomas, R.Q., C. Boettiger, C. Carey, M. Dietze, A. Fox, M.A. Kenney, C.M. Laney, J.S. McLachlan, J. Peters, J.F. Weltzin, W.M. Woelmer, J.R. Foster, J.P. Guinnip, A. Spiers, S. Ryan, K.I. Wheeler, A.R. Young, L.R. Johnson, S. Burnet, R. McClure, C. Brown, J. Zwart, G. Burba, J. Cleverly, A. Desai, W. Hammond, D. Lombardozzi, M. Bitters, M. Chen, S. LaDeau, C. Lippi, B. Melbourne, W. Moss, K. Gerst, C. Jones, A. Richardson, B. Seyednasrolla, T. Dallas, N. Franz, K. Norman, T. Surasinghe, E. Sokol, K. Yule. (2021). Ecological Forecasting Initiative: NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge documentation V1.0 (v1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4780155
*This version was used for round 1 of the Forecasting Challenge. The current instructions linked above are for subsequent rounds of the Challenge.

Video Resources

These videos provide a) an overview of why we need forecasts and why we are using NEON data, b) describes Forecasting Challenges in general, and c) provides an overview of the draft Ecological Forecast Standards that the EFI Cyberinfrastructure, Methods & Tools, and Theory Working Groups have developed. The Standards are still in beta testing, but you can find details on this GitHub repo which summarizes the proposed standards.