See details about the 2024 awardees here.
2026 Awardees
Find information about the project leads, group members, and project descriptions below.
- Forecasting PFAS Exceedance Under Changing Forest Landscapes
- Indigenous-Led Ecological Forecasting: Native Hawaiian Ecological Pairings for Community Climate Adaptation
- Exploring Snowmaking’s Economic and Hydrologic Impacts to Support Sustainable Water Management in the Southwestern US
Forecasting PFAS Exceedance Under Changing Forest Landscapes
Principal Investigator:
Ranjit Bawa (University of New Hampshire)
Group Members:
Waiyan Siu (Old Dominion University), Abhishek Kaul (Washington State University)
Project Description: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exceedances in drinking water are an urgent coupled human-natural systems problem. Contamination dynamics reflect both ecological processes (hydrological transport, forest cover, watershed buffering) and human behavior (industrial siting, development patterns, regulatory responses). Yet current PFAS risk assessments rarely incorporate formal uncertainty, causal inference, or decision-centric forecasting. Our project seeks to fill this methodological gap by developing a framework that produces uncertainty-aware PFAS risk maps under alternative scenarios of forest-cover change, tailored to the needs of land-use planners.
Indigenous-Led Ecological Forecasting: Native Hawaiian Ecological Pairings for Community Climate Adaptation
Principal Investigator:
Steven Johnson (Cornell University)
Group Members:
Scott Laursen (Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center), Shane Akoni Palacat-Nelsen (Hoʻāla Kealakekua Nui), Aric Arakaki (Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail)
Project Description: This project weaves social science, Indigenous knowledge, and ecological forecasting in partnership with the Kealakekua community to develop monitoring protocols based on a Native Hawaiian creation story. By tracking the presence and abundance of specific animal and plant pairings identified in this creation chant, we will co-produce ecological calendars to forecast seasonal shifts. This place-based approach empowers Indigenous stakeholders to lead climate adaptation, using ancestral wisdom to inform real-time conservation management and long-term resilience strategies.
Exploring Snowmaking’s Economic and Hydrologic Impacts to Support Sustainable Water Management in the Southwestern US
Principal Investigator:
Georgia Roberts (Northern Arizona University)
Group Members:
Matthew Rybecky (University of New Mexico in Albuquerque)
Project Description: Our project will focus on ecological impacts and nonmarket values of snowmaking operations in the water-stressed southwestern United States. Preliminary hydrological research will be used to design an ecologically accurate choice experiment. Choice experiments are a stated-preference method that can be used to estimate economic values for environmental goods like water quality. Our goal is to combine information about public preferences and ecological forecasting to support sustainable management and policy for snowmaking in the Southwest.
2024 Awardees
Find information about the project leads, group members, and project descriptions below.
- T-SECA: Transdisciplinary Social-Ecohydrology for Community Adaptation in the Brazilian Amazon
- Harnessing the Power of AI and Decision Science to Make Ecological Forecasting Data More Accessible and Impactful
- Forecasting LA County Oak Forest Regeneration Potential in Community
- Leveraging Economics for Invasion Impact Forecasting through Evolutionary Dynamics
- Advancing Social-ecological Forecasting in Puerto Rico: Integrating Social Dimensions to Support Decision-Making around Climate Adaptation
T-SECA: Transdisciplinary Social-Ecohydrology for Community Adaptation in the Brazilian Amazon
Principal Investigators:
Evan Bowness (The University of Western Ontario)
Magali Nehemy (Trent School of the Environment)
Group Members:
Catherine M. Febria (University of Windsor), Rodolfo Nobrega (University of Bristol), Genevieve Metson (The University of Western Ontario), Lewis Williams (The University of Western Ontario), Cortney Golkar-Dakin (Sâkihitowin Awâsis) (The University of Western Ontario), Marina Hirota (Federal University of Santa Catarina)
Project Description: Ethical transdisciplinary sustainability research is vital to support communities in the Brazilian Amazon, home to the world’s largest tropical forest and over 28 million people. Severe hydrological events, worsened by climate change, threaten these communities. T-SECA is co-led by the Indigenous Mundurukú community and will develop strategies for adapting to increasing threats of drought. Combining visual social science and ecohydrology, the project assesses vulnerabilities, identifies policy gaps, and co-develops pathways for community resilience.
Final Project Summary: The Ecological Forecasting Initiative supported a pilot trip in October 2024 to the Bragança Mundurukú Indigenous community in Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, to finalize and submit proposal to the upcoming NFRF-Exploration competition (Co-PIs: Evan Bowness and Magali Nehemy). The project is called “T-SECA,” Transdisciplinary Social Ecohydrology for Community Adaptation in the Brazilian Amazon and is highly interdisciplinary and fundamentally community-directed. The NFRF-E proposal is based on an emerging 2-year relationship between the community partner and Dr. Nehemy (based at the Trent School of the Environment), who had visited the Mundurukú territory. To put together an ethical and competitive proposal, the project team has deemed it necessary for Bowness, Nehemy, and Indigenous Researcher and Advisor to the Co-PIs Mateus Tremembé to visit the community to spend face-to-face time before the deadline in early November. Alongside support from the EFI, this proposal development trip was financially supported by the Trent School of the Environment and Western University. We are planning to work with the EFI Working Groups and the larger EFI network, hopefully during the upcoming conference in May, to expand the project team to include other EFI researchers.
During the visit, we discussed the idea with the community’s leadership, toured the community’s territory (seeing first-hand the critically low Tapajós River), networked with local academics based at UFOPA (the Federal University of Western Pará), and met with potential community facilitator for the project. These meetings were critical to establishing a foundation for the project should it be funded. We are committed to the community, and if it proposal is not funded, we will pursue other opportunities in the near future.
Harnessing the Power of AI and Decision Science to Make Ecological Forecasting Data More Accessible and Impactful
Principal Investigators:
Melissa Kenney (Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota)
Apoorva Joshi (Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota)
Group Members:
Sean Dorr (University of Minnesota), Carl Boettiger (University of California – Berkeley), Jacob Zwart (U.S. Geological Survey), Cee Nell (U.S. Geological Survey), Emily Read (U.S. Geological Survey)
Project Description: Our multidisciplinary group brings together principles of design justice, decision science, and visual science communication to develop a prototype AI-powered decision support tool that empowers users to access and interpret complex ecological forecasting data. By leveraging large language models (LLMs) to translate plain language user queries into computer code, we will create and test a flexible system that makes ecological forecasting data more usable, accessible, and actionable; using this proof-of-concept to develop competitive grant proposals.
Final Project Summary: The Ecological Forecasting Initiative supported travel for an in-person meeting at the University of California-Berkeley to discuss ideas after the submission of two federal agency grants to explore the prototyping of closed boundary AI-powered decision support tools that would leverage large language models (LLMs). During the meeting, we discussed project plans if grants are awarded, scoped new ideas to explore other sources of funding, and spent time exploring data sources and code that can be used to build a pre-prototype to allow our team to collaborate on a project regardless of whether grants are funded this round.
Forecasting LA County Oak Forest Regeneration Potential in Community
Principal Investigator:
Alana Rader (Lewis & Clark College)
Group Members:
Rosi Dagit (Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains), Alyssa Morgan (Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains)
Project Description: We will forecast oak regeneration potential following wildfires in LA County, building from measured oak forest dynamics (growth, decline, regeneration) over a period encompassing the Woolsey Fire. Participatory modelling workshops will bring land managers, users, and owners together to highlight how diverse actions and needs for damaged trees following wildfire feedback with post-fire forest cover. Resulting is a post-fire oak regeneration forecast that incorporates previously un-documented safety, value, and esthetic considerations at work in regenerating urban forests.
Final Project Summary: The Ecological Forecasting Initiative supported preparation for and implementation of a 3-week pilot research and planning trip to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (SMNRA) in Los Angeles County, CA. This trip brought all group members together to complete two main tasks. The first task was to survey long-term oak monitoring plots established across the SMNRA that provide historic biophysical data on mature oak tree and ground cover condition (2015 – present) central to this project. A full re-survey of the oak monitoring plots ensured up to date information on tree status following the January 2025 Palisades Fire, which impacted numerous individual oak trees in the project area. During oak plot monitoring, microclimate pilot monitoring took place simultaneously under the canopy of oak trees deemed ‘regenerating’ in previous surveys, to solidify equipment choice and study design in the event that grants to broaden this work in future years are successful. The second task of the trip was to solidify plans for a participatory GIS tool that will allow stakeholders to forecast oak tree regeneration potential during planned collaborative management workshops. A schema of the web-based participatory GIS application was created as well as a workflow to develop the tool within the next calendar year. Further, we discussed workshop timelines, early steps, and recruitment goals to start implementing within current funding allocations and in the event that future funding is awarded. Overall, we thank the Ecological Forecasting Initiative for the opportunity to lay groundwork to forecast oak forest regeneration potential in the face of increasing frequency and intensity of hazards that impact them.
Leveraging Economics for Invasion Impact Forecasting through Evolutionary Dynamics
Principal Investigators:
Melina Kourantidou (University of Southern Denmark)
Group Members:
Ross Cuthbert (Queen’s University Belfast), Daniel Pincheira-Donoso (Queen’s University Belfast), Thomas Bodey (University of Aberdeen), Anna Miall (Queen’s University Belfast)
Project Description: Our group will convene to explore and develop novel research questions and proposals, building on recently established concepts that incorporate evolutionary dynamics into invasion biology to forecast economic impacts. We aim to bring together interdisciplinary expertise in economics, ecology and evolution, to advance this innovative approach. Our collaboration will focus on refining methodologies and frameworks that bridge natural and social perspectives encompassing trait evolution and monetary costs, paving the way for impactful research across sectors and tangible funding applications.
Final Project Summary: The Ecological Forecasting Initiative seed grant supported the development of an interdisciplinary work integrating ecological, evolutionary, and economic dynamics in invasive alien species (IAS) forecasting. The project facilitated collaboration that led to a peer-reviewed publication in Trends in Ecology & Evolution (co-authored by all grant collaborators; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2025.03.016), which frames how evolutionary and economic processes can be more systematically incorporated into IAS forecasting. The seed grant also enabled the team to refine research directions, focusing on linking ecological traits, economic drivers, and evolutionary trajectories, which are now shaping ongoing discussions and next steps.
Building on these foundations, a forthcoming book chapter in the edited volume Invasive Species and Aquaculture (CABI) expands trait-based approaches for forecasting aquaculture-driven introductions and impacts, co-authored by project collaborators. A major outcome has also been the successful award of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, co-supervised by social and natural scientists (economist and biologist, respectively) at the University of Southern Denmark. This fellowship will develop a trait-based framework to forecast invasion risks under changing climate and economic conditions, directly building on the EFI-seeded ideas.
In addition, the project laid the groundwork for new collaborations with the European EFI chapter. These collaborations led to the proposal PREDICT – Platform for REsilient Data Integration and Coordinated Forecasting Tools, submitted to the 2nd OSCARS Open Call. This project aims to build an open, interoperable infrastructure for ecological forecasting, integrating diverse datasets and co-developing forecasting workflows that embed both ecological and social science expertise to support decision-making.
Together, these outcomes illustrate how EFI support contributed to scholarly outputs and long-term collaborations, with strong potential for future interdisciplinary research on IAS forecasting.
Advancing Social-ecological Forecasting in Puerto Rico: Integrating Social Dimensions to Support Decision-Making around Climate Adaptation
Principal Investigator:
Luis Rodríguez-Cruz (University of Puerto Rico at Utuado/USDA Caribbean Climate Hub)
Group Member:
Diana K. Guzmán-Colón (USDA Caribbean Climate Hub)
Project Description: Our team aims to evaluate the extent to which social dimensions are considered in ecological forecasting in Puerto Rico. We will explore how these dimensions can enhance model accuracy and reliability, and ultimately explore the limitations. The main outcome of our group will be a bilingual, open access white paper outlining research priorities, best practices, and funding opportunities to address food security, climate resilience, biodiversity, and natural resource conservation in Puerto Rico through improved ecological forecasting.