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 Fridays at noon US Eastern on September 29, October 27, November 17, and December 8. Additional calls will be scheduled for January to May. 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:
    • Integrated Species Distribution Models (forthcoming May 2023)
    • Bayesian Stable Isotope Mixing Models and the MixSIAR R package (forthcoming April 2023)
    • State-space Models and the Template Model Builder (TMB) R package (forthcoming March 2023)
    • Spatial Modeling in Ecology (forthcoming February 2023)
    • Zero Inflated GLM and GLMM (forthcoming January 2023)
    • 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 22, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  2. June 14, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  3. May 10, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  4. April 12, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  5. March 15, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  6. February 15, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  7. January 18, 2023 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  8. December 9, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  9. November 11, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  10. October 14, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  11. September 16, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  12. August 11, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  13. July 21, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  14. June 9, 2022 – joint CI and Methods Working Groups call
  15. May 12, 2022 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  16. April 14, 2022 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  17. March 10, 2022 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  18. February 10, 2022 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  19. January 13, 2022 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  20. December 7, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  21. November 9, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  22. October 12, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  23. September 21, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  24. August 20, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  25. July 16, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  26. June 25, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  27. May 24, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  28. April 26, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  29. March 29, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  30. March 1, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  31. February 1, 2021 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  32. December 15, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  33. November 17, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  34. October 20, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  35. September 22, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  36. August 24, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  37. July 27, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  38. June 29, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  39. June 1, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  40. May 8, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  41. April 17, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  42. March 27, 2020 – joint Methods and CI Working Groups call
  43. February 21, 2020
  44. November 14, 2019
  45. September 26, 2019
  46. August 21, 2019
  47. July 10, 2019