Date: July 26, 2023

EFI is excited about the opportunity to connect with the broader community through a number of events at ESA in Portland this year! Below are details about a workshop about the NEON Forecasting Challenge, the EFI Social, and the EFI organized oral session. Other ecological forecasting talks are also listed.
For the first time, we will also have EFI badges to add to your name tags!
We will continue to make updates to this page prior to ESA. All times listed below are in US Pacific Time.

EFI Badges

We will have EFI badges that can be attached to the ESA name tags available for individuals who are part of the Ecological Forecasting Initiative community. Find Mike Dietze or Anna Sjodin during the Conference or at the EFI-sponsored Organized Oral Session on Tuesday or the EFI Social on Wednesday to get a badge and look for others with the green badge!

EFI Social
Wednesday, August 9 at 6:30-8:00 PM

Meet up with others in the EFI community on Wednesday evening, August 9 from 6:30-8:00 pm at the Cartside Food Carts. Cartside has a range of food and drink options and is a less than 15-minute walk from the Convention Center.

Workshop:  Can You Predict the Future? Introducing the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge
Monday, August 7 at 11:45 AM – 1:15 PM; Location: C124

Freya Olsson (Virginia Tech) will be leading this 90-minute workshop that will be of interest to the EFI community. The workshop is perfect for those who want to know more about getting involved in the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge and will provide participants with materials and information to get them started. The primary goals of the session are to 1) introduce the Challenge and forecast themes; 2) familiarize participants with Challenge documentation as well as easy-to-use software, tools, and templates that have been developed in the R programming language; and 3) and facilitate participants in submitting their own forecast to the Challenge! We will provide a template forecasting workflow in R, using the daily terrestrial fluxes of carbon and evaporation theme as an example (neon4cast.org), and provide assistance to participants to set up their own forecasts. You can make sure you are ready to go for the workshop by looking at the draft materials here.

If you have questions about the workshop or set up instructions, please email freyao@vt.edu.

EFI Organized Oral Session: Ecological Forecasting: Applications, Discoveries, and Opportunities
Tuesday, August 8 at 1:30-3:00 PM; Location: 256

• 1:30 PM: Juniper Simonis (Dapper Stats, Inc.) – Forecasting desert rodent population dynamics in a changing climate
  
• 1:45 PM: Alexa Fredston (University of California, Santa Cruz) – Spatial ecological forecasting: applications to marine fish range dynamics
  
• 2:00 PM: Joanna Blaszczak (University of Nevada) – Anticipating the timing and magnitude of cyanotoxin production by benthic cyanobacteria in rivers
  
• 2:15 PM: Lynda Bradley (Emory University) – Predicting host-parasite dynamics after resource pulses: From host physiology to community infection risk
  
• 2:30 PM: Helene Genet (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) – Reducing model uncertainty of the permafrost carbon climate feedback through parameter optimization
  
• 2:45 PM: Diego Ellis-Soto (Yale University) – Data integration for ecological forecasting: Elevational and physiological offsets improve species distribution models
  

Other Forecasting Presentations

If you are presenting an ecological forecasting-related talk or poster that you don’t see on the list, reach out so we can get it added!

Monday, August 7

• 4:30-4:45 PM: Michael Stemkovski, Location: C125-126. Session: Climate Change: Communities 2. Quantifying the timescales and functional consequences of ecosystem acclimation lags

Tuesday, August 8

• 10:15-10:30 AM: Jorge Arroyo-Esquivel, Location B117. Session: Back and Forecasting in Ecology. Using neural ordinary differential equations to predict complex ecological dynamics from population density data
• 10:30-10:45 AM: Freya Olsson, Location: B117. Session: Back and Forecasting in Ecology. A multi-model ensemble of empirical and process-based models improves the predictive skill of near-term lake forecasts
• 10:45-11:00 AM: Kayode Oshinubi, Location: E144. Session: Population Dynamics: Modeling 4.
  The effects of nonlinear averaging of temperature on population growth varies across diverse species
• 11:00-11:15 AM: Michael Dietze, Location: B117. Session: Back and Forecasting in Ecology.  Landscape-scale iterative forecasting of terrestrial carbon pools and fluxes : a Harvard Forest testbed
• 5:00 – 6:30 PM: Mary Lofton, Location: ESA Exhibit Hall. Poster Session: Modeling.
  A multi-model ensemble to explore the limits of phytoplankton bloom prediction
• 5:00 – 6:30 PM: Whitney Woelmer, Location: ESA Exhibit Hall. Poster Session: Modeling.
  Iterative near-term ecological forecasts provide new insight into the predictability of multiple water quality variables over time and space

Wednesday, August 9

• 8:00 – 9:30 AM: Mary Lofton, Location: C124. Workshop.
  Teach Quantitative Reasoning and Ecological Forecasting to Undergraduates with Project EDDIE and Macrosystems EDDIE Modules
• 1:30-1:45 PM: Whitney Woelmer, Location: D140. Session: Education: Research and Assessment.
  Embedding communication concepts in forecasting training increases students’ understanding of ecological uncertainty
• 2:00-2:15 PM: Charlotte Malmborg, Location: D137. Session: Invasion 3.
  Moving towards forecasting forest canopy recovery rates and trajectories following invasive insect pest defoliation events
• 2:30-2:45 PM: Mary Lofton, Location: D140. Session: Education: Research and Assessment.
  Macrosystems EDDIE: A modular curriculum to teach undergraduates ecological forecasting using R Shiny applications improves student confidence, familiarity, and conceptual understanding
• 3:30-3:50 PM: Olivia Tabares, Location: 255. Session: We Are Stronger Together: Building Community to Face Barriers for Latin American and Underrepresented Ecologists Symposium.
  Culturally relevant teaching: experiences from the Ecological Forecasting Initiative working with Latinx and Native-American students and teachers

Thursday, August 10

• 10:30-10:45 AM: Zoey Werbin, Location: D133-134. Session: Soil 2.
  Forecasting the soil microbiome across the United States
• 1:30-1:45 PM: Rachel Harman, Location: B114. Session: Populations 1.
  Shifts in range of the invasive stored product insect pest, Prostephanus truncatus, under climate change
• 3:30-3:34 PM: Felipe Montealegre-Mora, Location: E141. Session: Fisheries Management & Models 2.
  Pretty darn good control: when are approximate solutions better than approximate models