Methods & Tools

The integration of data and models is at the core of ecological forecasting. There is much that can be learned about forecasting methods from other disciplines, from weather forecasters through to economic forecasters. But ecologists also face challenges that outside the mainstream of either of these extremes, such as a high degree of process heterogeneity across many scales and an abundance of semi-mechanistic models, where physical and chemical constraints play an important role but many functional relationships are empirically derived. This working group will advance the statistical methods and tools for forecasting and data assimilation by advancing statistical approaches and best practices for data assimilation, translating these into software tools usable by ecologists, and develop uncertainty estimates on common data.

Methods Working Group Schedule of Calls:
The Methods & Cyberinfrastructure Group will meet jointly on Thursdays at 2pm US Eastern on September 19, October 17, November 21, and December 19. A new schedule for January to May 2025 will be created in December. We are always open to people joining the calls, contact us at eco4cast.initiative@gmail.com

Methods Blog Posts and Resources

  • Introducing EFI Task Views!
  • R Shiny Seminar Series – recordings and resources from 4 seminars that demonstrated a variety of technical aspects for R Shiny web app development and provided example R code for a Shiny app that incorporates the features shared during the seminars. The topics in this series include:
    • A Primer to Creating Interactive Maps with Leaflet in Shiny
    • Improving Speed of Shiny Apps by Pre-Computing Models
    • Creative Visualization of Model Results and Uncertainty in Shiny
    • Visualization of Data in Space and Time: An Interactive Framework
  • Statistical Methods Webinar Series – recordings and resources from webinars on a range of statistical tools and R packages that can be used for each of the tools. The topics include:
    • wsyn Wavelet approaches to studies of synchrony in ecology
    • SpaDES for developing and running Spatial Discrete Event Simulation models
    • Spatiotemporal modeling
    • Applications of the `aniMotum` R package for quality control, behavioural estimation and simulation of animal movement data
    • HMSC, Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities
    • Ecological Forecasting with Dynamic Generalized Additive Models
    • Integrated Species Distribution Models
    • Bayesian Stable Isotope Mixing Models and the MixSIAR R package
    • State-space Models and the Template Model Builder (TMB) R package
    • Spatial Modeling in Ecology
    • Zero Inflated GLM and GLMM
    • Structural Equation Models and the piecewiseSEM R package 
    • Analysis of Bioacoustic Data 
    • Spatial Occupancy Models and the spOccupancy R package
    • Hidden Markov Models,
    • NIMBLE,
    • Multi-species Occupancy Modeling,
    • Integrated Step-Selection Analysis,
    • Movement Ecology,
    • Generalized Joint Attribute Modeling (GJAM),
    • Generalized Additive Models (GAMs),
    • Species Archetype Models and Regions of Common Profile Models,
    • Mixed Models
Matt Brousil provides an overview of the Cyberinfrastructure and Methods Working Groups’ progress on the Task Views for the EFI 2022 Conference held May 23-25, 2021.

Notes from Working Group Calls
Chair: Jacob Zwart (USGS)

  1. August 19, 2024 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  2. July 22, 2024 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  3. June 24, 2024 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  4. May 17, 2024 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  5. April 26, 2024 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  6. March 15, 2024 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  7. February 23, 2024 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  8. January 19, 2024 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  9. December 8, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  10. November 17, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  11. October 27, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  12. September 29, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  13. August 22, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  14. June 14, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  15. May 10, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  16. April 12, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  17. March 15, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  18. February 15, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  19. January 18, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  20. December 9, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  21. November 11, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  22. October 14, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  23. September 16, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  24. August 11, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  25. July 21, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  26. June 9, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  27. May 12, 2022 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  28. April 14, 2022 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  29. March 10, 2022 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  30. February 10, 2022 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  31. January 13, 2022 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  32. December 7, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  33. November 9, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  34. October 12, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  35. September 21, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  36. August 20, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  37. July 16, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  38. June 25, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  39. May 24, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  40. April 26, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  41. March 29, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  42. March 1, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  43. February 1, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  44. December 15, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  45. November 17, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  46. October 20, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  47. September 22, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  48. August 24, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  49. July 27, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  50. June 29, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  51. June 1, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  52. May 8, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  53. April 17, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  54. March 27, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  55. February 21, 2020
  56. November 14, 2019
  57. September 26, 2019
  58. August 21, 2019
  59. July 10, 2019