Membership

By joining EFI, members affirm their commitment to our Shared Values and Operating Principles and Procedures and their interest in building the community of practice around ecological forecasts.  We encourage members to be active participants in EFI Working Groups and on Slack discussions (requests to join Slack can be sent to eco4cast.initiative@gmail.com).

How to join:

Individuals who want to be listed as an EFI member can fill out this form where you will be asked to provide your name, photo, email, social media, and a short, 1 sentence synopsis of what you’re working on. If you have a near-term forecast project you want to have highlighted you can also create a profile for the project using the same form.

Members whose affiliation or forecasting interests need to be updated should email eco4cast.initiative@gmail.com to request updates.

Find Current Members, Affiliations, and Interests With This Interactive Map

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EFI Steering Committee Member Directory

Michael Dietze
Boston University

Michael leads the Near-term Ecological Forecasting Initiative and the PEcAn Project. He is the Chair of the EFI Steering Committee and a member of the EFI RCN Steering Committee.

Anna R. Sjodin
Environmental Protection Agency

Anna is interested in forecasting the risk of viral infection and transmission through space and time.  Anna is the Interim Associate Chair for the Steering Committee.

Meghan Beatty
University of Florida

Meghan's interests are in forecasting population dynamics during disturbance events and capturing spatial dependence in forecasts.  Meghan is the EFI Student Association representative on the Steering Committee.

Christopher Brown
University of Maryland

Christopher is interested in developing and transitioning local and regional scale ecological forecasts and systems of the coastal oceans to operations.

Nievita Bueno Watts
Cal Poly Humboldt

Nievita is interested in diversifying the field by providing connections between her Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawai'ian, Hispanic, and African American students who come from majors in many diverse fields and opportunities for paid internship research and graduate opportunities which may be available throughout the network. 

Istem Fer
Finnish Meteorological Institute

Istem is interested in forecasting terrestrial ecosystems and improving models through statistical methods.

Kira Sullivan-Wiley
The Pew Charitable Trusts

Kira is an environmental social scientist whose work focuses on the drivers underlying environmental decision-making and behavior, and the impacts on people from ecological dynamics.

Glenda Wardle
The University of Sydney

Glenda is passionate about using near-term forecasts to transform the way we do ecology. She collects and models long-term datasets to understand how populations and ecosystems persist and function over multiple temporal and spatial scales. 

Jacob Zwart
U.S. Geological Survey

Jake develops forecasts of aquatic variables using machine learning techniques in support of water management decisions in the U.S.

Jason McLachlan
University of Notre Dame

Jason is using experiments, paleo observations, model prediction, and prior studies in a Bayesian assimilation framework strengthen predictive forecasting of salt marshes. Jason is an ex-officio non-voting member of the EFI Steering Committee and he is on the RCN Steering Committees.

Quinn Thomas
Virginia Tech

Quinn works to predict the future of forest and freshwater ecosystems by combining observations and ecosystem models using statistical techniques. He is the PI of the EFI Research Coordination Network and he is leading the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge. Quinn is an ex-officio non-voting member of the EFI Steering Committee. 

Jody Peters
University of Notre Dame

Jody is the Program Manager of EFI. She coordinates EFI activities to promote collaboration and communication both within and outside of EFI. Jody is the secretary for the EFI Steering Committtee.

EFI Member Directory

Antoinette Abeyta
University of New Mexico Gallup Branch

In order for scientific tools and research to be innovative, the tools and methods need to be accessible to people who have been historically excluded and be culturally relevant. Antoinette is interested in working with historically excluded groups with limited internet access to make forecasting and data science accessible.

Rose Abramoff
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement

Rose is interested in integrating messy ecological data into models

Quinn Adams
Boston University School of Public Health

Quinn studies the human health impacts of climate change and extreme weather events. She is particularly interested in forecasting vector-borne disease risk to inform disease control interventions.

Peter Adler
Utah State University

Peter examines how species interactions mediate the impact of climate change on plant communities and if plant functional traits can predict population and community dynamics.

Andrew Allyn
Gulf of Maine Research Institute

Andrew is interested in using ecological forecasting tools to understand the seasonal distribution and abundance of marine species and support decision making processes.

Jaime Ashander
USGS

Jaime uses decision analysis, population dynamics models, and climate data to investigate optimal management of natural resources in a changing world. Jaime's work includes applications to conservation, threatened & endangered species, sustainable harvest, and invasive species.

Emma Atkinson
University of Alberta

Emma's research works towards better understanding the population dynamics and spatial ecology of hermaphroditic spot prawns (Pandalus platyceros), in the coastal waters of British Columbia, Canada. Emma uses population models, long-term datasets, and fieldwork to address biological information gaps and place my work in the context of the prawn-by-trap fishery in BC.

J. Alex Baecher
University of Florida

Alex is investigating climate-induced species redistribution

Francis Banville
Université de Montréal

Francis develops mathematical models to predict the structure of food webs on a global scale in his doctoral studies.

Brittany Barker
Oregon State University

Brittany develops ecologically-informed models to help agricultural decision-makers with managing and monitoring pests, their crop hosts, and their natural enemies. Her most recent work focuses on predicting both where and when to expect invasive species before they can establish and spread.

Ceres Barros
University of British Columbia

Ecosystem responses to disturbances and global change drivers at landscape scales, mostly using dynamic vegetation models, but also multitrophic approaches.

Carly Batist
City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center

Carly is a primatology and conservation technology PhD candidate who uses passive acoustic monitoring to survey ruffed lemurs in Madagascar, implementing machine learning & species distribution/occupancy models to process those data.

Meghan Beatty
University of Florida

Meghan's interests are in forecasting population dynamics during disturbance events and capturing spatial dependence in forecasts.

Joe Bennett
Carleton University

Joe is studying species at risk population forecasting, intersection with policy

Deepit Bhatia
Penn State University

Deepit is interested in investigating how early warning system indicators such as autocorrelation can be used in "reverse"--i.e., to understand (and forecast) when certain areas are closer to disease elimination at the local level.

Tracy Bibelnieks
University of Minnesota Duluth

Tracy's area of research is applied data analytics/data science that crosses disciplinary areas. She is particularly interested in working with integrated bioscience faculty and students on research that impacts/affects/informs the status of the natural environment.

Peter Billman
University of Connecticut

In Peter's work, he strives to understand the mechanistic causes of species' range shifts in response to climate change in mountainous regions in order to inform and forecast upcoming shifts. In doing so, Peter aims to help inform climate adaptation planning across numerous temporal and spatial scales.

Joanna Blaszczak
University of Nevada, Reno

Joanna is interested in forecasting aquatic ecosystem dynamics and water quality using high-frequency sensor measurements.

Benjamin Blonder
UC Berkeley

Using forecasting to improve controllability of ecological community dynamics

Korryn Bodner
Unity Health Toronto

Korryn is broadly interested in combining near-term forecasting with One Health to predict and prevent the emergence and spread of infectious diseases that impact wildlife, domestic animals, and humans.

Carl Boettiger
UC Berkeley

Carl is interested in the theory of ecological forecasting, understanding the limits to forecasting, what makes it different in ecology, and how we can approach robust decision-making despite limited forecasting ability. Carl is also on the EFI RCN Steering Committee.

Jessica Bolin
University of the Sunshine Coast

Jessica is a PhD Candidate working with commercial fishers and seafood processors to create seasonal forecasts of the likelihood of harvesting swordfish exhibiting myoliquefaction ("jellymeat") off Eastern Australia.

Jonathan Borrelli
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Jonathan is working towards building both near- and long-term forecasts of water quality and food web dynamics for Lake George, NY.

Vicky Boult
University of Reading

Vicky is interested in the use of sub-seasonal to seasonal meteorological forecasts to inform decision making in agriculture, disaster risk management and conservation. She has particular expertise in African drought forecasting and elephant conservation.

LM Bradley
Emory University

LM studies how freshwater resource pulses alter host-parasite dynamics through ecological theory, modeling, and experimental work. LM's approach combines individual-level bioenergetic theory with Ecological Stoichiometry theory to build population-level scenario modelling predictions.

Jeremy Brady
SUNY College at Brockport

As a previous land manager, Jeremy dealt with the consequences of poor decisions that left a large impact on the environment. Forecasting research would enable land managers to make better decisions based on predictable patterns and improve the outcomes of restoration projects.

Andrew Brainard
Upstate Freshwater Institute

Andrew is new to ecological forecasting, and looking forward to learning!

Jorge Brenner
Jupiter Data Factory

Jorge works on the spatial dynamics of marine systems and animal movement forecasts, and their interaction with climate change.

Stephanie Brodie
CSIRO

Stephanie is interested in ecological predictability and forecasting of marine living marine resources for ocean management.

Cole Brookson
University of Alberta

Cole is interesting in forecasting food webs and disease dynamics in response to global change. He focuses specifically on forecasting how anthropogenic change will "rewire" both predator-prey and host-parasite interactions, and what that means for the stability of communities.

Christopher Brown
University of Maryland

Christopher is interested in developing and transitioning local and regional scale ecological forecasts and systems of the coastal oceans to operations.

Matthew Brousil
Colorado State University

Matthew works for the Radical Open Science Syndicate (ROSS) at Colorado State University, where he focuses on using reproducible workflows to harmonize large, open water quality and remote sensing datasets.

Julien Brun
NCEAS, UC Santa Barbara

Julien does not yet do much forecasting. Julien's primary research is on ecosystem transitions in response to water availability changes with a focus on vegetation and remote sensing monitoring

Lauren Buckley
Department of Biology, University of Washington

Lauren aims to leverage organismal biology (particularly physiology) to improve ecological and evolutionary forecasts and to develop computational and visualization tools to translate climate change into biological responses (the TrEnCh project).

Mark Buckner
Cornell University

Mark is interested in facilitating spatial conservation prioritization and biodiversity conservation by furthering our understanding of how species distributions and ecological communities may shift in response to global change.

Jessica Burnett
NASA Ecological Forecasting Program

Jessica is a AAAS Science & Tech policy fellow with the NASA Ecoforecasting Program in Earth Science Division, Science Mission Directorate, focusing on the Applied Science projects. Jessica's research interests include better understanding the pipelines and workflows for data and information use in research and application.

Wilton Burns
University of New Hampshire

Wilton uses high-frequency environmental sensor data to better understand, predict, and plan for harmful cyanobacteria blooms in freshwater systems in New England.

Nathan Byer
Cleveland Metroparks

Nathan works with a variety of quantitative tools and approaches to predict climate and land use change effects on sensitive taxa and systems by using a combination of hierarchical Bayesian approaches, species distribution, agent-based, and demographic modelling approaches, applied to avian, reptilian, and mammalian taxa.

Kristin Byrd
U.S. Geological Survey

Kristin is interested in forecasting dynamic wildlife habitats and potential for climate resilience in wetlands and working landscapes.

Jamie Caldwell
University of Hawaii at Manoa/James Cook University (Australia)

Jamie develops ecological forecasts of infectious disease dynamics in people and wildlife. She is particularly interested in the climate-disease relationships and currently has projects forecasting mosquito-borne diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa and South America and coral disease outbreak risk in the Pacific Ocean.

Kyle Capistrant-Fossa
University of Texas at Austin

Kyle is interested in the monitoring and measuring of the health, carbon sequestration, and productivity of seagrass meadows.

Cayelan Carey
Virginia Tech

Cayelan's research focuses on water quality forecasting, forecasting for management. Cayelan is also on the EFI RCN Steering Committee.

Michael Catchen
McGill University

Michael is interested in the intrinsic forecastability of the dynamics of metapopulation and metacommunities, and using simulation (primarily in the Julia language) to generate synthetic data, to which forecasting methods can be applied to test their efficacy.

Kaelin Cawley
NEON

Kaelin is not currently active in forecasting research. However, while working at NEON she has been interested in facilitating the use of NEON's data (and other data sources) for forecasting applications. Kaelin's background is dissolved organic matter fate and transport in the environment and she is interested in connecting with folks studying carbon cycling.

Sudipto Chatterjee
TERI School of Advanced Studies

Sudipto is interested in Biodiversity and Conservation and Landscape Ecology.

Tina L. Chen
Bat Conservation International

Tina is interested in applying technological and forecasting tools to conservation solutions, particularly in relation to the management of bats affected by the disease, white-nose syndrome, in North America.

Alex Chubaty
FOR-CAST Research & Analytics

Alex is an ecologist, simulation modeller and co-developer of the open source SpaDES simulation platform. He supports the development and integration of models simulating forest vegetation dynamics, wildfire, insect disturbance, and wildlife populations to inform decision making for land management and species at risk. Alex is an advocate for open source, open data, and reproducible workflows.

Francois Clayer
Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA)

Francois is interested in forecasting water quantity and quality in lakes and reservoirs mostly with process-based models, investigating sources of forecasting skill, and adapting forecasting tools to management.

Alessio Collalti
National Research Council

Alessio's background is in Forest Ecology, Carbon and Nitrogen Cycle, Forest and Vegetation Modelling, particularly with regard to vegetation numerical modelling and response under natural and anthropogenic stress, including climate change impacts and forest management scenarios.

Elyssa Collins
North Carolina State University, Center for Geospatial Analytics

Elyssa's research focuses on building large scale geospatial forecasts that predict the impacts of flooding on infrastructure under various climate, land use, and adaptation scenarios.

Kathy Cottingham
Dartmouth College

Kathy is interested in forecasting cyanobacterial blooms in freshwater lakes, especially low-nutrient lakes where blooms occur only intermittently in space and time.

Theresa Crimmins
USA National Phenology Network

The USA National Phenology Network currently offers short-term (6d) threshold-based forecasts of the start of spring and several insect pest and plant phenological events. (more at www.usanpn.org/data/forecasts)

Jonathan Cummings
US Fish and Wildlife Service

Jonathan conducts ecological forecasting to assess species status and provide decision support for endangered species act implementation.

Laura D'Acunto
U.S. Geological Survey

Laura works on forecasting wildlife and plant responses to restoration, management, and climate change in highly dynamic wetland ecosystems.

Diana Dalbotten
University of Minnesota

Diana is the director of Diversity and Broader Impacts at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at UMN. The focus of her work has been on broadening participation of underrepresented students, and particularly Native Americans in STEM.

Andria Dawson
Mount Royal University

Andria uses quantitative methods and ecological data to address questions about spatio-temporal vegetation and climate change. Keywords: Bayesian, modelling, paleo-ecological, forest

Elvira de Eyto
Marine Institute

Elvira is interested in understanding how LTER data can be used to build accurate models of future ecological conditions.

Ankur Desai
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Forecasting of land-atmosphere fluxes to advance understanding of scaling and modeling Earth system processes using a variety of methods including eddy covariance flux towers.

Megan Donahue
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Megan's team is developing forecasts for coral disease outbreaks across the Pacific in partnership with NOAA Coral Reef Watch.

Sean Dorr
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

Sean is passionate about bringing non-expert and expert communities together to realize shared visions for equitable and sustainable futures. As a Designer and Technologist, Sean bridges this gap by co-creating products, services, and systems with communities through a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice lens using design thinking and participatory methods.

Michael Drielsma
NSW Department of Planning Industry and Environment

Michael's interests are in examining biodiversity in the face of climate change, at both the community and species level, and integrated with other biophysical drivers, threats and pressures

Joe Eisaguirre
US Geological Survey Alaska Science Center

Joe uses mechanistically-motivated statistical forecasts to better understand the spatiotemporal dynamics of wildlife populations and optimize survey designs and monitoring programs.

Bikem Ekberzade
Istanbul Technical University

Bikem is trying to discern the future direction and speed of the migration of woody taxa (forest species) due to climate change for the Anatolian Peninsula and its immediate surroundings by means of a DGVM and different sources of climate data. Bikem is interested in both horizontal and vertical migration of species; its effects on biodiversity and ecosystem resilience.

Gamal El Afandi
Tuskegee University

Dr. Gamal is very interested to study extreme weather events like drought, heatwaves, flash floods, desertification, etc. and their frequency under climate change conditions. He is using meteorological applications in different environmental studies, such as its relation and impact on the health sector especially Allergy and Asthma. At the same time, he is using the WRF model in different applications to validate its output comparisons with reality.

Diego Ellis Soto
Yale University, Max Planck-Yale Center for Biodiversity Movement and Global Change

Diego's PhD consists in integrating remote sensing, animal telemetry and auxiliary information for near-term forecasting of animal responses to anthropogenic and environmental change.

Mira Ensley-Field
Utah State University

Mira is working on creating an early spring forecast of fine fuel loads in the Intermountain West to help managers make wildfire risk assessments.

Morgan Ernest
University of Florida

Morgan's work focuses on forecasting future biodiversity states as a means for assessing our theoretical understanding of the drivers of biodiversity dynamics.

Johnathan Evanilla
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences

Johnathan is interested in co-desgining ocean forecasts with their intended end-users that support the growth of the blue economy

Nima Farchadi
San Diego State University

Nima's research works towards supporting climate-readiness and sustainable fisheries by applying statistical approaches and developing visualization tools to better understand climate-induced redistribution of marine predators and fishing fleets.

Olufemi Fatunsin
University of Alabama

Olufemi is interested in forecasting forest productivity (biomass) in view of future climate conditions.

Anita Feng
University of Notre Dame

Anita is currently assisting Dr. Jody Peters, the EFI Program Manager, in the McLachlan Lab at the University of Notre Dame.

Istem Fer
Finnish Meteorological Institute

Istem is interested in forecasting terrestrial ecosystems and improving models through statistical methods.

Jake Ferguson
University of Hawai`i

Jake is interested in predicting future population abundances and predicting future species ranges.

Catherine Foley
NOAA Fisheries

Catherine is a Fisheries Biologist in the Ecosystem Surveys Group with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Her work focuses on fisheries independent survey implementation, as well as data analysis and visualization.

Grant Foster
Louisiana State University

Broadly Grant is interested in how disease persists in and affects the structure of natural communities, and I hope to be able to use ecological forecasting techniques to predict how disease-community dynamics may be affected by changing environments.

John Foster
USDA

John is working with USDA to build forecasts for feral swine abundance to help inform their management.

Joshua Fowler
Rice University

Josh is interested in plant population demography and microbial symbioses, interested in incorporating species interactions for forecasting species range shifts and responses to environmental variability.

Andrew Fox
Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation

Andrew studies the terrestrial carbon cycle, from leaf to global scales, and over time periods from seconds the millennium with a focus on how to improve ecological forecasts using different types of observations and data assimilation techniques. He is on the EFI RCN Steering Committee.

Nico Franz
Arizona State University

Nico is the principal investigator of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Biorepository at Arizona State University, and is focused on broadly promoting the integration of NEON and natural history collections organismal data in ecological forecasting.

Marjorie Friedrichs
VIMS

Marjorie's team at VIMS has developed a forecasting system that produces short-term forecasts of hypoxia, acidification metrics, and harmful algal blooms for the Bay, and an annual hypoxia report card to track progress towards attaining water quality standards. Through their ongoing collaborative work with Chesapeake Bay Program managers as well as fisheries and aquaculture industry members, the team continues to work to make their science highly relevant and useful for Chesapeake Bay stakeholders.

Kathryn Fuller
Western Sydney University

Kathryn is participating in the EFI NEON Ecological Challenge and plans to incorporate the skills gathered during the challenge in her wildfire research.

Gideon Gal
Kinneret Limnological Laboratory, IOLR

Gideon is interested in forecasting future lake water quality and ecosystem conditions.

Cara Gallagher
University of Potsdam

Cara is an ecophysiologist fascinated by research at the interface of animal energetics, behavior, and conservation, with key interests in how energy shapes patterns in ecology and influences species risk under human disturbance. She is a postdoctoral researcher and modelling the role of energetics in the emergence of life history patterns and population dynamics using physiological theory and agent-based modelling.

Amanda Gallinat
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, National Phenology Network

Amanda is forecasting spring plant phenology across the USA using data from NEON and the National Phenology Network.

Matthew Garcia
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Matthew is interested in analyzing and (eventually) forecasting insect outbreaks and dispersal in boreal forests, especially the spruce budworm.

Bradley Gay
George Mason University, NASA-GSFC, NASA-LRC

Bradley is working on Arctic-Boreal Permafrost Dynamics, Land Carbon Cycle Modeling, and Ecosystem Response Forecasting

Alison Gerken
USDA ARS - Center for Grain and Animal Health Research

As a new quantitative ecologist, Alison's forecasting research is "under construction" but she is interested in phenology of insects (particularly stored product insect pests) and how we can forecast their emergence and peak infestation times during the year. Alison is also interested in risk assessment of stored grains and when they may be at highest risk for infestation or when treatment for insect infestations may be needed.

Michael Gerst
University of Maryland

Michael's application area is in translation of ecological forecasts to actionable science for decision-making. Specifically, Michael has expertise in stakeholder engagement and decision support tool design and testing.

Sophie Gilbert
University of Idaho

Sophie is working to forecast predator-prey, plant-herbivore, and human-wildlife interactions in the Western US, in order to foster coexistence by maximizing ecosystem service delivery while minimizing disservices.

Niles Gilles Yoccoz
UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Nigel's group uses models including trophic interactions and climate effects to forecast population dynamics of harvested, threatened and key species in boreal/arctic ecosystems.

Olivier Gimenez
CNRS

Olivier is interested in forecasting species demography and distribution in the context of global change

R. Andrew Goodwin
US Army ERDC-EL

Andrew's research focuses on improving the analysis and near-term predictions of ecological phenomena near built infrastructure and the associated engineering/management actions that can alleviate tension sometimes arising from meeting the multiple needs of both the environment and human society

Aaron Greenville
University of Sydney

Aaron's group aims to predict how ecosystems respond to disturbance events across space and time. They are working on utilizing neat-term forecasting for long-term animal and plant datasets from central Australia as part of an ARC grant.

Ashton Griffin
Mailchimp

Ashton is a former ecologist working in industry, wanting to get back into ecological work and grow engineering skill set.

Geoffrey Gunn
IISD-Experimental Lakes Area

Geoffrey is working to mobilize ecological datasets into analysis-ready products that support forecasting and prediction.

Pablo Gutiérrez-Fonseca
University of Costa Rica

Pablo's research focuses on forecasting the response of tropical stream ecosystems to large-scale disturbances (e.g., hurricanes, droughts, ENSO).

Lisa Haber
Virginia Commonwealth University

I am interested in forecasting carbon cycle processes in a recently experimentally-disturbed northern temperate forest (within the FoRTE project, #FoRTExperiment) and at a restored freshwater tidal wetland site in Virginia.

Sandra Hamel
Université Laval

Sandra is interested in forecasting population dynamics and species interactions in northern ecosystems for guiding adaptive management and conservation.

Elizabeth Heeren
UTSA

Elizabeth's interests lie in the phenology of deciduous trees native to central Texas (the Edwards Plateau ecological region), to deepen the understanding of the impacts of climate change on sheltered species, such as the Uvalde Bigtooth Maple.

John-André Henden
University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway

John-André uses dynamic food web models (i.e. including trophic interactions and local climate effects) to forecast population dynamics of harvested and other key species in boreal/arctic ecosystems.

Jonas Hentati Sundberg
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Jonas works with various sensors and AI to study breeding seabirds. He hopes to use the data streams from those systems to build predictive models for seabirds breeding ecology.

Will Hammond
Montana State University

Will works on Bayesian state space models to create probabilistic forecasts for terrestrial and marine ecosystems. He is interested in model selection techniques, especially metrics for model comparisons.

Dalei Hao
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Dalei works on predicting terrestrial carbon cycle (GPP, SIF) and vegetation phenology.

Michael Harfoot
UNEP-WCMC

Mike develops process-based whole ecosystem models (www.madingley-model.org) and is applying it to socio-ecological futures. He is interested in the development of our ecological understanding through forecasting and how we can move from stylised scenarios to more useful forecasts.

Güray Hatipoğlu
Middle East Technical University

Güray is estimating sources of nitrogen pollution to the rivers to make two types of forecasts: 1) via changes in their sources, 2) via the proxy variables that are easier to track, such as through remote sensing.

Kelly Heilman
University of Arizona

Kelly's research aims to understand and forecast the forest responses to multiple environmental changes across multiple scales, with the overall goal of managing systems for a resilient future.

Victoria Hemming
The University of British Columbia

Victoria explores methods for eliciting and improving expert judgment when data is poor or absent and is interested in determining whether we can use these techniques to provide a baseline of species distributions and population size estimates which can then be used by decision-makers for assessing the impacts to threatened species.

James Herlan
College of Staten Island

James is interested in testing ecological theory using explicit spatial patterns of corals along environmental gradients, especially wave energy, at different spatial scales.

Alistair Hobday
CSIRO

Alistair's research focus is on marine ecoforecasts for pelagic species, at seasonal time scales and marine heatwave forecasting.

Rod Holden
Natural Impact Group

Rod is interested in understanding the nexus between Natural Capital Accounting, SEEA and Ecological Forecasting

James Holmquist
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

James is a wetlands ecologist focused on researching carbon cycle and sea-level rise resiliency issues at large spatial scales, as well as facilitating collaboration in the coastal carbon science and management communities.

Jeff Houlahan
University of New Brunswick

Jeff is convinced that predictive ability is the only way to assess and estimate how much we know. Jeff's lab is working on projects that estimate how much we know about fundamental ecological questions.

Dexter Howard
Virginia Tech

Dexter studies carbon cycling and ecological forecasting in lakes and reservoirs.

John Huber
University of Notre Dame

John is interested in using forecasting and Bayesian inference to understand the transmission dynamics of vector-borne diseases and inform their control.

Catherine Hulshof
Virginia Commonwealth University

Catherine studies the linkages between plant functional traits, environmental variability, and population and community dynamics in tropical and temperate mountains.

Robert Isdell
Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Robert researches coastal shorescapes and develop species distribution models of coastal species under current and future conditions.

Katie Irving
Southern California Coastal Water Research Project

Katie is interested in stream temperature forecasts in relation to heat waves and human activities including waste water effluent.

Nick Isaac
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

Nick's application area is in advising government agencies on scale of ambition required to deliver biodiversity targets.

Rodolfo Jaffe
Exponent

Rodolfo is interested in spatial modelling and land use (deforestation) forecasting.

Mingkai Jiang
Western Sydney University

Mingkai is building a near-term ecological forecasting platform for EucFACE under ambient and elevated CO2 treatment

Leah R Johnson
Virginia Tech

Leah develops statistical methods to integrate data into complex biological models, particularly applied to understanding how climate change will impact the transmission of vector-borne infections.  Leah is on the EFI RCN Steering Committee.

Chris Jones
NC State University

Chris is interested in forecasting the spread and population growth of invasive pest and pathogen populations.

Matt Jones
DataONE / NCEAS

Matt's interests center around sustainable cyberinfrastructure for reproducible science, with an emphasis on supporting preservation and reuse of complex research objects and computing environments for cross-cutting synthesis, analysis, and forecasting.

Noël Juvigny-Khenafou
University of Koblenz-Landau

Noël is interested in predicting the effects of multiple interacting anthropogenic stressors on freshwater communities and food webs over time and space.

Meghan Keating
Clemson University

Meghan is using location data and quantitative methods to address questions about survival and spatial responses of mesopredators to human development and rodenticides.

Mira Kelly-Fair
Boston University

Mira took Mike Dietze's Eco Forecasting graduate class and is producing a phenology forecast for the NEON Forecasting Challenge.

Melissa Kenney
University of Minnesota

The goal of Dr. Kenney's program is to understand and improve the stakeholder engagement processes and decision support tools that aid environmental management decisions, both in the public and private sectors.  Melissa is also on the EFI RCN Steering Committees.

Jeremy Kerr
University of Ottawa

Jeremy is identifying processes that contribute to extinction risks for species during climate change, or that can improve their prospects of persistence or colonisation elsewhere and identifying mechanisms and strategies to protect biological diversity.

Sikander Khare
University of Florida

Sikander's background is in physics and complex systems science, and his interests are in theoretical ecology including community ecology, ecosystem ecology, spatial ecology, eco-evolutionary dynamics, and ecological forecasting. Sikander is also generally interested in using mathematical, computational, and statistical models to study ecology.

Matthew Kling
University of Vermont

Matt is interested in understanding and forecasting the effects of climate change on plant biodiversity at macroecological scales.

David Klinges
University of Florida

Dave leverages mechanistic microclimatic and biophysical models to understand ecological responses to past, present, and future climatic and land use change. Current projects including global microclimate mapping, the influence of land use on amphibian distributions in Madagascar, and forecasting climate connectivity.

Gerbrand Koren
Utrecht University

Gerbrand's research focuses on quantifying and better understanding the cycling of carbon and water between atmosphere and vegetation. Gerbrand is interested to learn how environmental conditions influence this exchange.

Cazimir Kowalski
University of Notre Dame

Cazimir works on the prediction of prairie forest dynamics at a Paleo timescale

Koen Kramer
Land Life Company

Koen works on carbon capture projections for forest restoration projects

Shannon LaDeau
Cary Institute

Shannon works on vector ecology, pathogen transmission, and disease risk

Christine Laney
NEON

Christine's primary professional interest is in making ecological data more accessible to a wide array of communities. She leads development of NEON's data portal and works on ecological informatics projects. Chrfistine is on the EFI RCN Steering Committee

Jake Lawlor
McGill University

Jake's interests in forecasting pertain to forecasting distribution shifts of ecologically and economically relevant species, mostly in coastal marine habitats. He hopes to build species distribution forecasting tools that can help direct ecological management or restoration efforts.

Nathan Layman
EcoHealth Alliance

Nathan is currently working on a project working to increase the accuracy of early-day disease forecasts. Nathan also has experience forecasting zoonotic reservoir distribution for Lassa fever.

Abby Lewis
Virginia Tech

Abby studies biogeochemistry and ecological forecasting, particularly in a freshwater context.

Jianwei Li
Tennessee State University

Jianwei is interested in integrating weather, soil, plant to project soil carbon dynamics in response to warming.

Joshua Linenfelser
SFWMD

Joshua has completed various analyses for research projects using Bayesian Mixing models within Florida Bay of Everglades National Park.

Mary Lofton
Virginia Tech

Mary is interested in forecasting phytoplankton communities in freshwater ecosystems.

Danica Lombardozzi
National Center for Atmospheric Research

Danica's research focuses on how terrestrial ecosystems are changing in response to human activities and the impact that these changes have on climate. I use a combination of field and laboratory techniques, ecological models, and data synthesis to address these questions across space and through time.

Robert Lonsinger
US Geological Survey Oklahoma Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit

Robert is interested in near-term forecasting of wildlife populations and dynamic patterns of co-occurrence among competitive species. He works at the intersection of science and management and is interested in leveraging long-term harvest and monitoring data for near-term forecasting.

Kelly Luis
University of Massachusetts-Boston

Kelly is interested in coastal and inland water quality forecasting.

Heather Lynch
Stony Brook University

Heather works on the MAPPPD project which calculates occupancy probabilities and presents graphical output which projects how penguin populations will change in the future.

Charlotte Malmborg
Boston University

Charlotte is currently focused on forecasting the spread and impact of invasive forest pests, as well as recovery dynamics following invasion.

Emily Markowitz
NOAA

Emily is a Research Fisheries Biologist in the Eastern Bering Sea Survey Team in the Groundfish Assessment Group at NOAA Fisheries Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC). She has provided statistical and data visualization expertise for the national annual Fisheries Economics of the US report and has worked on sea turtle issues and marine mammal acoustics.

Jackie Matthes
Wellesley College

Jackie is working on a project to forecast the impacts of invasive forest insects and pathogens, and she also develops inclusive pedagogical resources for teaching foundational forecasting concepts and tools.

Ana Carolina Mazzuco
Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo

Ana Carolina is interested in developing ecological empirical models to predict marine biodiversity patterns in coastal habitats, currently working on rocky shores, tropical reefs, and rhodolith beds.

Tempest (Tess) McCabe
Boston University

Tess models how disturbances such as invasive grasses, management, land use & fire affect pine forest stands in the Southeastern United States. Tess wants to understand what modeling ecosystems can tell us about ecological theory, and how improving ecological theory can help make ecosystem behavior easier to predict.

Ryan McClure
Washington State University

Ryan is excited about forecasting ecosystem processes and parsing uncertainty as a means to better understand how improvements to predictions can be made.

Dan McGlinn
College of Charleston

Dan is interested in developing forecasts of biodiversity. He has worked with a range of taxa (plants, birds, and fish) in the past, and most of his current work has examined the scale-dependent nature of biodiversity.

Kenton McHenry
National Center for Supercomputing Applications

Kenton's aim is to support the evolving cyberinfrastructure needs within emerging areas such as ecological forecasting having developed data management tools, workflows, and scientific gateways for efforts such as PEcAn.

Tom McLaren
Klamath Bird Observatory

Tom oversees point count survey data collection for songbird species. This data is used to understand conservation-relevant topics like the impact of forest health treatments on songbird distributions and the effects of disturbance on songbird communities.

Belinda Medlyn
Western Sydney University

Belinda's research focuses on forecasting vegetation function. Special interests Australian vegetation and drought mortality.

John Mensah
University of Nebraska - Lincoln

John works on modelling the effect of weather variables on plant demography

Brandon Merriell
Trent University

Brandon is interested in forecasting wild population trends (abundance, density, occupancy, etc.) while accounting for uncertainties relating to the changing climate/environment.

Michael Frederick Meyer
Washington State University

Michael is predicting community shifts in nearshore lake systems

Nate Mietkiewicz
NEON

Nate is interested in forecasting forest structure and woody fuels as a future baseline for future fuel loads under differing climate scenarios and how that impacts future wildfire.

Aabid Mir
CERD (Community of Education, Research and Development) Foundation

Aabid is working on climate envelope and ecological niche modelling for the conservation of endangered plants in Indian Himalaya.

Melania Michetti
ENEA - Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development

Melania is interested in the impact of climate change and air pollution on economy and society and on human health and forest ecosystem services evaluation under different managements and climates.

Anas Mohamed Usoof
University of Alberta

Mohamed is interested in forecasting freshwater ecosystem dynamics in response to multiple stressors including changes land use in surrounding landscapes and climate.

Libby Mohr
Environmental Defense Fund

Libby works on forecasting water quality in freshwaters using models that integrate physical and biogeochemical processes.

Glenn Moncrieff
The Nature Conservancy (TNC)

Glenn is developing forecasts for vegetation dynamics in distrubance-prone, non-forest ecosystems. This is mostly done using machine learning and remotely-sensed data, and hence Glenn spends a lot of time thinking about how to produce well-calibrated uncertainties for these types of models.

Jeff Morisette
Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station

Jeff is interested in developing and utilizing ecological forecasting that is co-produced with the wide range of stakeholders engaged with forest and rangeland management.

Bailey Morrison
University of California Merced

Bailey is developing an IAV mapping and forecasting tool from Sentinel-2 imagery and airborne imaging spectroscopy to monitor and forecast the impacts of management actions on invasive aquatic vegetation distributions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Delta in California to help stakeholders incorporate this knowledge into their Structured Decision Making Frameworks.

Hassan Moustahfid
NOAA

Hassan works on ecological fishery forecasting of short-lived species to inform fisheries management.

Cee Nell
USGS

In Cee's role as a data visualization specialist at USGS, they create visuals to communicate the process and outputs of forecasting efforts.

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Robert Newman
University of North Dakota

Robert is interested in forecasting changes in wildlife habitat in the northern Great Plains. Robert is also interested in environmental and climate justice and how decisions of those in power impact Indigenous communities who have inhabited this land for far longer than settler communities, and who may have different values for the lands and waters that we all depend on. 

Madeline Nyblade
University of Minnesota

Madeline studies the impacts of climate and land use change on Wild Rice in the upper Great Lakes Region in partnership with Ojibwe Nations.

Jim Olds
George Mason University

Jim is interested in looking at continental scale metagenomic data from NEON in response to nitrogen gradients.

Kyle Oliveira
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences

Kyle's research is on forecasting the movement of marine megafauna and its relation to changing climate parameters.

Freya Olsson
Virginia Tech

Freya is working on multi-model ensemble forecasts of water temperature in lakes and reservoirs

Stephen Osakpolor
University of Koblenz-Landau

Stephen is interested in understanding how future changes in anthropogenic stressors will affect food webs and biodiversity.

Kayode Oshinubi
Northern Arizona University

Kayode's current research deals with the use of data science and machine learning tools for statistical data in disease ecology. Kayode has been able to publish some papers and some in review on forecasting of epidemics.

Caroline Owens
NOAA NCCOS

As part of NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Caroline helps to produce near real time forecasts of harmful algal blooms in coastal and inland water bodies across the United States.

Karun Pandit
North Carolina State University

Karun's interests are in terrestrial modeling using dynamic vegetation models to explore vegetation biomass, and effects of fire, climate, and invasive species.

Maria Paniw
CREAF | Ecological and Forestry Applications Research Centre

Maria investigates how individual traits and demographic rates in both plants and animals mediate population and biodiversity responses to environmental change.

Jelena H Pantel
University of Duisburg-Essen

Jelena is interested in community and biodiversity forecasting.

Airy Peralta
University of Colorado Boulder

Airy is interested in model validation techniques and model improvement to enhance conservation efforts.

Janette Perez-Jimenez
University of Cincinnati

Janette is interested in using forecasting tools to inform sustainable management and conservation recommendations pertaining to bat species within subterranean habitats.

George Perry
University of Auckland

George's research is at the interface of palaeoecology and neoecology. George is interested in how palaeoecological data can contribute to contemporary forecasts and how neoecological forecasting methods can help us understand palaeecologicala data better.

Mario Pesendorfer
University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna

Mario plans to develop seed production and pollen load forecasts based on historical time-series, mechanistic models, and deep-learning approaches

Owen Petchey
University of Zurich

Owen and his team at the University of Zurich research fundamental issues of ecological predictability mostly by experimentation with model microbial ecosystems.

Will Petry
Princeton University

Will is working to predict biodiversity at the population-to-food web scales by understanding how an organism's demographic rates are affected by competition, predation, and abiotic drivers.

Timothée Poisot
Université de Montréal

Timothée works on developing predictive models of biodiversity change and viral emergence risk, with a specific focus on problems with low data volumes

Ayush Prasad
University of Helsinki

Ayush is interested in developing physics-guided machine learning methods with applications in ecological forecasting.

Janet Prevey
U.S. Geological Survey

Janet is interested in forecasting plant phenology.

Ann Raiho
NASA GSFC / University of Maryland

Ann is interested in improving forecasts of long-term forest community ecology by constraining ecosystem models with paleo-ecological data.

Hao Ran Lai
University of Canterbury

Hao Ran is interested in the transferability of trait-based joint species distribution models in New Zealand

Giovanni Rapacciuolo
California Academy of Sciences

Giovanni is interested in modeling and forecasting the responses of native and non-native intertidal organisms across the California coast to guide their protection and management.

Emily Read
U.S. Geological Survey

Emily is the Chief of Web Communications for the United States Geological Survey Water Resources Mission. She is responsible for the digital delivery of water data and information in accessible, discoverable, and interoperable formats.

Nicholas R Record
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences

The Tandy Center for Ocean Forecasting is a computational oceanographic team at Bigelow Laboratory. We work with stakeholders to develop and deploy real-time ocean forecasting tools for industry, conservation, resource management, communities, and education. Our aim is for people to have access to tools and resources they need to use and deploy forecasts.

Jamie Reeves
Oklahoma State University

Jamie's research focuses on predicting terrestrial arthropod community composition and nutrient availability for trophic transfer. Jamie combines field and laboratory methods to quantify arthropod nutrient content, relate community-level biomass to habitat characteristics, and assess spatial patterns and scaling using remote sensing.

Cameron Reimer
Boston University

Cameron took Mike Dietze's Eco Forecasting graduate class and is participating in the NEON Forecasting Challenge.

Jody Reimer
University of Utah

Jody works on polar marine ecology and is interested on (and working to improve) our ability to better forecast sea ice algal blooms.

Muhammad Riaz
Government College University Faisalabad, Pakistan

Muhammad is interested in biogeochemistry of soil organic matter and black carbon (biochar) in agroecosystems, and also CNP cycling under the influence of land-use changes and climate.

Kristina Riemer
University of Arizona

Kristina uses plant ecosystem models to predict agricultural crop yield and productivity.

Caleb Robbins
Baylor University

Caleb is an aquatic ecosystem scientist, developing a water quality forecasting system for a large, polymictic reservoir in central Texas.

Jake Robinson
University of Sheffield; The Remote Sensing Company

Jake is interested in learning and applying innovative methods to understand ecological dynamics - for the conservation of biodiversity and restoration of ecosystems.

Christy Rollinson
The Morton Arboretum

Christy's interests are in forecasting near- and long-range responses of trees and forests to climate variability and change. She is currently working on citizen science-based forecasts of budburst and fall color in The Morton Arboretum's Living Collections to study biodiversity and climate sensitivity as well as visitor engagement. 

Kevin Rose
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Through an academic-industry partnership, Kevin is using data from a variety of high frequency sensors and weather forecasts to generate both short and medium-term water quality forecasts.

Camille Ross
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences

Camille works to produce habitat models for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales and their key prey resources.

Noam Ross
EcoHealth Alliance

Noam studies the ecology of emerging infectious diseases and is interested in forecasting spillover and transport of disease.

Madelyn Rupp
Texas A&M University at Galveston

Madelyn is a PhD student at TAMUG researching the spatial ecology of sea turtles in and around Galveston.

Pranav Sadana
University of Winnipeg

Pranav is interested in using ecological forecasting tools to inform conservation measures. In particular, Pranav likes working at the confluence of ecology and physiology and using models to understand of how animals are affected by anthropogenic changes.

Sakshi Saini
Wetlands International South Asia

Sakshi is interested in community assembly patterns and predicting how they can change in the future. At present, I am working with citizen science data.

Rob Salguero-Gómez
Oxford

Rob uses big data in population ecology and stage-structured models to forecast species viability

Samantha Sambado
University of California Santa Barbara

Samantha's current research questions focus on environmental drivers of vector behavior and how vector behavior (i.e. phenology) can shape pathogen persistence and human disease risk. In addition to her own empirical data, Samantha is working with publicly available data from NSF, NIH, CDC, USGS, and USDA to build a macro to micro framework of tick-borne disease risk across the United States.

Callum Savage
The Australian National University

We are developing an ecological forecast service for rivers and wetlands in the Northern Murray-Darling Basin, Australia.

Toryn Schafer
Texas A&M

Toryn is interested in the methodological needs of ecological forecasting as a statistical ecologist.

David Scheurer
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

David is interested in the development and transition to application of ecological forecasts for coastal management decisions. I currently serve as the ecological forecasting portfolio manager within NOAA.

Eduardo Schroder
University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus

Eduardo is involved in the sustainable use of legume species for agricultural and ecological purposes.

Kyle Schultz
Oregon State University

Kyle's research is focused on bridging the gap between environmental science and sustainable investing by integrating ecosystem models, geospatial analysis, and sustainable investing theory.

Helen Scott
BBN Technologies

Helen is interested in creating networks to share data and integrate multiple data sources into a forecast. Helen is also interested in forecasting biogeochemical cycles and microbial biodiversity in the ocean.

Paul Selmants
U.S. Geological Survey

Paul is interested in near-term forecasting of tree mortality, wildland fire, and ecosystem carbon balance.

Bilgecan Şen
Stony Brook University

Bilgecan is a population ecologist interested in how small scale processes, such as density dependence and intrinsic population growth, determine macroecological patterns. He develop population models using Bayesian techniques and strive to make useful population forecasts under climate change with an explicit focus on different uncertainty sources.

Saeed Shafiei Sabet
University of Guilan

Saeed's interests are in anthropogenic noise impacts on marine ecosystems at individual and community levels

Alexey N Shiklomanov
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Alexey's research dream is to develop an "ecological reanalysis": model predictions of a variety of ecological variables through space and time that are continuously updated to reflect new observations (and particularly, remote sensing datasets).

Gabriela Shirkey
Michigan State University

Gabriela's research evaluates the impacts of land use and land cover change in managed environments, and ecological forecasting provides relative insights to carbon variability.

Ian Shuman
Stony Brook University

In the past, Ian has worked with historical vegetation records with the goal of refining our understanding of the processes which shaped the historical landscape and applying this knowledge to forecasts. In the future, Ian hopes to incorporate forecasting into his work with Arctic carbon and water cycling,

Debjani Sihi
Emory University

Debjani is interested in forecasting soil organic matter decomposition and greenhouse gas emission in natural and managed systems across earth's major biomes.

Dana F. Simon
Université de Montréal

Dana has experience on management of large scale projects on research and innovation in high impact areas of interest for the Canadian society; the mining industry and the blue-green algae problematic in lakes and in the drinking water treatment facilities.

Emily Simmonds
Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Emily is working on near-term forecasting of population dynamics using matrix population models. Her work focuses on improving predictions through better uncertainty propagation, inclusion of climate drivers of vital rates, and employing ecological forecast horizons.

John Smith
Montana State University

John is interested in near term iterative forecasting for terrestrial ecosystems. In particular, John works on accessible methodology for state space modeling, and is also interested in spatial-temporal ecosystem dynamics.

Anna R. Sjodin
Environmental Protection Agency

Anna is interested in forecasting the risk of viral infection and transmission through space and time.

Jasper Slingsby
University of Cape Town

Jasper is a recent ecoforecasting convert. Jasper spent a decade working for a government agency supporting Long Term Ecological Research which helped him see the value in automating the pipeline from data collection to decision support and the necessary adaptive feedback loops. Jasper's most current projects focus on satellite remote sensing.

Eric Sokol
NEON

Eric is a Quantitative Ecologist at the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). He is interested in using metacommunity theory and long-term data to predict future trends in biodiversity.

Anna Spiers
University of Colorado Boulder

Anna forecasts beetle community distributions in the Southern Rocky Mountains using NEON data and is interested in propagating taxonomic uncertainty.

Julia Stepanuk
Biodiversity Research Institute

Julia is interested in developing short-term forecasts of marine megafauna in highly urbanized areas and the potential application as decision support tools to mitigate anthropogenic impacts on marine species.

Clare Stephens
Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment

Clare works on dynamic vegetation modelling of Australian ecosystems under climate change, especially ecohydrologic response.

James Paxton Stodder
Pardee Center, Boston University

James is interested in forecasts of carbon tax impact and structured vector auto-regressions.

Ayanna St Rose
University of Arkansas

Ayanna's research focuses on using openly available LiDAR and observational data to explore the link between complexity and multifunctionality

Jennifer Szymanski
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Jennifer works in the Division of Endangered Species within the Branch of SSA Science Support. Her responsibilities include predicting the future status of imperiled species given projected future threats.

Olivia Tabares Mendoza
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Olivia is interested in developing forecasts of invasive plant ranges that incorporate land-use management and climate change scenarios, to see if invasive plants will be able to keep up with global environmental change and establish risk areas

Sasha Tetzlaff
US Army ERDC-CERL

Sasha's research interests broadly encompass animal ecology and behavior focused on movement and space use, habitat selection, physiology, foraging, wildlife diseases, captive animal welfare, reintroduction biology, animal personality, predator-prey interactions, social network analysis, and modeling population and community parameters.

Mridul K. Thomas
University of Geneva

Mridul is interested in testing and advancing ecological theory through generating and evaluating forecasts.

Mikaela Tillman
Norwegian Institute for Nature Research

Mikaela is interested in developing short term forecasts on condition, production and loss of reindeer calf in a one year time frame, and compare the predictions to observational field data in an iterative process.

Ben Toh
Northwestern University

Ben is interested in application of Bayesian statistics and mathematical modeling in infectious disease, public health and ecological problems.

Jonathan Tonkin
University of Canterbury

Jonathan's interests are in forecasting population and community responses to environmental change using a combination of statistical, mechanistic and hybrid models

Andrew Tredennick
Western EcoSystems Technology, Inc.

Andrew is developing a new approach to making population forecasts at the landscape scale using remotely-sensed time series of plant abundance.

Ayesha Tulloch
University of Sydney

Ayesha is an applied ecologist interested in addressing some of the world’s most pressing conservation challenges of recovering biodiversity in human-modified landscapes. Her vision is to influence and empower communities to live more sustainably with our environment through better understanding the functional role of ecosystems, species and natural processes, improving the science of measuring and evaluating ecosystem health, and more accessible and ecologically-informed methods of forecasting the consequences of land management decisions.

Ben Tupper
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science

Ben is interested in workflows that merge citizen science observations with public environmental datasets to produce near term marine forecasts.

Pattama Ulrich
The Ohio State University

Pattama is interested in the development of an intervention and probabilistic modeling tool for the ecology and health community for the purpose of analyzing potential environmental risks and determining optimum risk reduction and cost effective interventions.

Shravan Kumar Undaru
University of California, Berkeley

Shravan Kumar is looking to work on the Beetle NEON Forecasting Challenge.

Giorgio Vacchiano
Università di Milano, DISAA

Giorgio is interested in forest response to management under climate change and natural disturbances.

German Vargas-Gutierrez
University of Minnesota

German is highly interested in the use of ecological forecasts to predict tropical forest dynamics in response to disturbances (drought, wildfire, hurricanes, etc.).

Andrew Villeneuve
University of New Hampshire

Andrew is using thermal-death-time models of marine invertebrates to inform metapopulation models that explicitly account for mortality from heatwave events.

Sean Walsh
University of Melbourne

Sean is developing and calibrating a new mechanistic model for tree and seed population dynamics in natural forests in fire-adapted ecosystems. The aim is to provide a tool that can make predictions under a range of future climates, fire regimes and management scenarios.

Eric Ward
National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA)

Eric generally works with lots of univariate/multiviariate time series problems, as well as developing new spatiotemporal models for application to physical or biological data.

Harry Watkins
St Andrews Botanic Garden

Harry's research is in functional biogeography and I am interested in building knowledge transfer partnerships, particularly using BIM technology.

Martin Wegmann
EPFL

Martin is working on forecasting Dissolved Oxygen and Chlorophyll-A in Lake Geneva.

Jake Weltzin
US Geological Survey

Jake is interested in the potential to improve our understanding of ecological systems, and the management and sustainability thereof, through the production of operational ecological forecasts.

Michael Wethington
Stony Brook University

Michael is interested in marine seabird forecasting near the Antarctica Peninsula.

Kathryn Wheeler
Boston University

Kathryn is interested in vegetative phenology forecasting and cyberinfrastructure.

Ethan White
University of Florida

Ethan's forecasting projects include automated-iterative forecasting for the Portal Project, automated phenology forecasting, and research on forecasting biodiversity.  

Bruce Wilson
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Bruce is working to provide data support to forecasters and understanding their needs.

Emmerson Wilson
Memorial University of Newfoundland

Emmerson is interested in predicting the response of carbon to moose and insect management in eastern boreal forests

Alyssa Willson
University of Notre Dame

Alyssa evaluates trends in forest community change over the Holocene to improve long-term forecasts of community composition and carbon storage with climate change. Alyssa is a co-chair of the EFI Student Association and is on the EFI RCN Steering Committee.

Whitney Woelmer
Virginia Tech

Whitney's interests center around aquatic ecology and ecological forecasting. Broadly, Whitney is interested in phytoplankton predictability and temporal and spatial scales, and how ecological forecasts can help to improve water quality. In particular, she is eager to find ways to make ecological forecasting applicable at a broad diversity of sites in order to better serve natural resource management and decision support. Whitney is a co-chair of the EFI Student Association and is on the EFI RCN Steering Committee.

Stephen Wood
The Nature Conservancy, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Stephen is interested in soil science, particularly soil carbon, and the possibility of forecasting changes in soil carbon stocks and its impact on natural and managed ecosystems.

Alex Young
SUNY College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry

Alex is new to forecasting and is exploring ecological forecasting within the context of biogeochemistry, spectral biology, and tree physiology.

Jacob Youngblood
Southern Oregon University

Jacob is comparing mechanistic and correlative models in forecasting grasshopper outbreaks.

Casey Youngflesh
Clemson University

Casey is interested in understanding how population-level processes, and biodiversity are responding to global environmental change.

Luke Zachmann
Iggy

Luke is interested in using in situ and remotely sensed observations to forecast phenological processes in support of both basic science and management.

Qian Zhang
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science/EPA Chesapeake Bay Program

Qian is interested in the modeling and synthesis of large-scale data sets for watersheds and other ecosystems. Specific research interests include (1) evaluation of long-term water-quality trends and uncertainties; (2) improvement of statistical methods for riverine flux estimation and trend analysis; (3) analysis of patterns of nutrient and sediment export and controlling factors.

Gengping Zhu
Washington State University

Gengping is good at long term forecast that use long term average climate data and uses niche and distributional modeling technique to forecast species distribution in long terms. Gengping plans to put more effort on short-term forecast in near future.

Kai Zhu
University of California Santa Cruz

Kai is interested in studying phenology, soil, and wildfire under global environmental change.

Elise Zipkin
Michigan State University

Elise and her team develop analytical frameworks to address grand challenges in the study of biodiversity loss and the effects of anthropogenic activities, such as climate change. She harnesses empirical data (big and small) to understand fine and subtle interactions in the natural world, revealing the causes and consequences of species’ declines and biodiversity loss while charting pathways to mitigate and reverse these alarming trends.

John Zobitz
Augsburg University

John has three interests including (1) developing accessible software protocols and tools for data visualization - prior and post an ecological forecast, (2) applying mathematical and statistical methods for data assimilation and ecological forecasts, and (3) developing the first two with a keen eye for undergraduate interdisciplinary education, primarily focused through the lens of undergraduate mathematics.